Biden campaigns in Wisconsin on Sunday. Biden takes aim at 'Vouchercare'

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Wading into Paul Ryan territory, Vice President Joe Biden delivered a blistering critique of the GOP vice presidential nominee’s Medicare proposal and warned that the Republican ticket would turn the health care system for seniors into “Vouchercare.”

As he campaigned in Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin on Sunday, Biden hammered Ryan and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for endorsing a Medicare proposal that would give seniors subsidies to purchase private health care plans. Biden, echoing a common Democratic attack, accused Republicans of wanting to “end the guarantee of Medicare.”


“Ladies and gentleman, it’s just that simple: We are for Medicare; they are for Vouchercare,” Biden told the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of about 1,000 at the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay.

In his criticisms, Biden evoked his mother, Catherine, who campaigned with him in 2008 and died two years later at the age of 92. (At Sunday’s rally, Biden misspoke, saying his mother died at 93.)

“My mom was a smart woman,” he said. “But, my mom, I can’t picture handing her a voucher at age 80 and saying — you go out in the insurance market and you figure out what’s best for you.”

By demanding a repeal of the health care law — the Obama administration’s top domestic priority achievement — Republicans would put insurance companies “back in charge of our health care,” bring steep cuts to Medicaid and drop millions of young adults from their parents’ health care plans, Biden said.

“Folks, this is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said. “No, for real. This is a different breed of cat. This is not even Mitt Romney’s father’s Republican Party.”

During the roughly 25-minute speech, Biden also rattled off a list of criticisms of the Republican Party on issues ranging from taxes to the deficit to foreign policy, particularly lambasting the GOP for demanding “massive” tax cuts for the rich.

“Folks, we’ve seen this movie before, and we know how it ends,” Biden said. “It ends in lost jobs, stagnant wages, watching the equity in your home evaporate, watching your retirement account decimate. It ends in a catastrophe for the middle class. It ends in the great recession of 2008.”

At the Republican convention, “they talked about the state of the nation and all these terrible things that happened in 2009,” Biden added. “How do they think they got there? No, no really. Do they think we have amnesia?”

Biden also jabbed at Republicans’ focus on the middle class at their convention last week, saying “all of a sudden,” the GOP “discovered” the middle class during the Tampa convention.

Reprising a line from an earlier campaign swing in York, Pa., Biden told the crowd, which began booing at the utterance of Romney’s and Ryan’s names: “We don’t need your boos; we need your votes.”

Before a backdrop of several old railroad cars, Biden — a well-known Amtrak aficionado — began his speech by proclaiming his love for trains and his well-known daily commute during his 36 years in the U.S. Senate.

“I’m the biggest railroad guy you’ve ever known,” Biden said. “I have traveled round trip from Wilmington, Del., to Washington, D.C. … over 7,900 times now.”

Recent polls show a hotly contested race in the Badger State, with a Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll released Aug. 23 showing Obama leading Romney narrowly, 49 percent to 47 percent. Obama won Wisconsin with more than 56 percent of the vote in 2008.

Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin took several swings at the Republican ticket and her Senate opponent, former Gov. Tommy Thompson, in a speech warming up the crowd before Biden’s remarks. Both are vying to succeed the retiring Herb Kohl.

“They would provide budget-busting tax cuts for those at the top and cut investments in education, in innovation, in small-business growth and [in] rebuilding our manufacturing economy. They would provide seniors with a voucher and end the guarantee of Medicare,” Baldwin said.

Romney’s campaign pushed back at Biden’s rhetoric.

“Vice President Biden today offered no solutions to our country’s problems, just false attacks and failed policy proposals that have led the country in the wrong direction,” said Amanda Henneberg, a Romney spokeswoman. “The fact is: Americans are not better off today than they were four years ago, something even the president’s own surrogates concede. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s economic plan will bring relief to the middle class and ensure that the next four years are better than the last.”