Biden: Americans ‘don’t know’ about White House’s accomplishments

Seeming to echo a line of criticism usually voiced by Republicans, Vice President Joe Biden said Friday that most Americans and even many experts “don’t even know” what’s inside the White House’s signature legislative accomplishments.

Biden said that lack of understanding was “because of all the advertising done” by opponents of those bills.

Asked by ABC's “This Week” host Jake Tapper in an interview aired Sunday if the administration “is getting enough credit” for the Wall St. bill, the health care bill, and the economic Recovery Act in light of polls showing the majority of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track, Biden said: “The vast majority of the American people and a lot of people really involved don't even know what's inside the packages.”

“People don't know a lot of what's going on in The Recovery Act,” Biden said, ”understandably, because this has been so much stuff that has been flowing our way.”

Despite those polls, Biden said, the country is moving in the right direction, saying of Americans who disagree “nor could they or should they” understand that, given the 6.7 million jobs lost in the last six months of the Bush administration and the first six months of the Obama administration.

Pointing to jobs growth in recent months, he added that when the “country is in trouble, all [people] want to know is… that we're moving in the right direction.”

“But they don't think that we are, “ Tapper replied.

“No. No, they don't think now because I don't think they know the detail of what's going on,” said Biden, who said “the health care numbers are going up” now “because they're figuring out that small businesses are going to get a 30 percent tax cut. They didn't know that because of all the advertising done.“

Detailing what he called “the summer of recovery,” Biden said, “We have two, three times as many highway projects going. We have significant investment in broadband for the first time now. It's starting to really ramp up [with contracts] in high speed rail, in wind energy.

“This is a hard slog, man,” Biden said. “And it's counter-intuitive. It's counter-intuitive to say someone sitting at a kitchen table in Claymont, Del., who lost their jobs -- by the way, we saved or created three million jobs and they pick up when we lost three million.”