How are you . Whats your name . Lets turn around, lets get a picture taken. Is that mommy . [inaudible] thank you very much. Thank you. Good to see you. You like the fair . What you like best . [inaudible] the roller coaster. I thought that might be a. It. Good to see you. [inaudible] on the politics editor for the newspaper. We are going to go over our ground rules once again. What are we . Iowa nice. No heckling, be kind to your fellow humans. No signs held up because then people cant see and thats not very nice. Ado, former Vice President joe biden. [cheers and applause] thank you very much. Hello, iowa. Good to see you all. I am jill bidens husband. Im going to be very brief and im going to be very brief and quick with you. Im running for three reasons. We have to restore the soul of this country. What we sow out of charlottesville, the hate and venom we saw, and the president saying that the groups who met him as law as well as the young woman who was killed, what did he think about them, he said they were very fine people in both groups. Very fine people. No sitting president has ever said Something Like that. The only thing that has happened is it has gotten worse, it to divide us can divide us in a way that is totally contrary to who we are. We really are in a fight to restore the soul of this country. We have let the world in the past not just because were the most partial nation in the world, but it is not the exercise of our power, it is the power of our example. Were losing that kind of influence with the rest of the world. It is very damaging. The second reason i am running is i want to restore the backbone of this country. The backbone of this country is the middle class. The middle class built this country. Wall street did not build this country. [cheers and applause] mr. Biden and the middle class made it possible for workingclass people to rise up. The poor ot have a road up. When the middle class does well, everybody does well. The poor do well, the wealthy do well, and the middle class is the glue that holds us together. It is falling apart right now. We are no longer the wealthiest middle class in the world. We have a significant portion saying that their children will never have a life that they had. My dad used to have an expression, he said a job is a lot more than a paycheck. It is about dignity and respect. It is about your place in the community how can you have this notion of being able to look your kid in your eye and say they will be ok if you do not have Adequate Health care . What do you do when you look at a child who has a preexisting condition and theres nothing you can do about it, or when your child or someone you love has a terminal disease like my son did. I cannot imagine what it would be like watching him coming home from iraq with an incurable disease given months to live and an Insurance Company could come in and say your time is up. Suffer in peace the last four months. It is about being able to have an education for your child that you know they have an opportunity for. That is why we should be out there, and we can afford it, tripling the amount of money on title i schools. Raising salaries for teachers. Making sure that we deal early on with all of those things. We know we need teachers. My wife is a fulltime teacher. We are in a situation now where one child for every psychologist in the school system, there are 1700 kids. What are we doing . We can afford to change this if we just get rid of some of these godawful tax cuts that were passed. The idea that we are in a position that we have trillions of loopholes in the law. You cant possibly justify 500 billion worth of loopholes. You cant possibly justify 500 billion worth of loopholes. I can make sure everyone in the country has adequate insurance. Built on obamacare, make sure it has a public option can increase the prospect of lowering drug prices. How much time do i have left . How much . 15 seconds . To speak . Oh yall are in real trouble then, man. Ive got more time to speak. The idea that we cannot gain control and give people a fighting chance is not correct. There used to be a basic bargain in america. Republicans and democrats agreed on it. We disagreed on the extent of it, but we agreed at the end of the roosevelt administration, and that is if you contributed to the wellbeing of the company you work for, you get a share of the benefits. If it went well, you did well. That is no longer the case anymore. We have adopted a position in america that says the only people entitled to rewards are stockholders, because they are the only job creators. I have noticed that the folks delivering the grains to the mill, they are job critters. The folks who make the automobile, they create jobs. I know the people who built this country or ordinary, hardworking people who have been given have a chance. The idea that we dont reward work as much as well is bizarre. As much as wealth is bizarre. We are in a situation where you have the top 1 paying a lower tax rate than you do because it is mostly capital gains. More than a teacher, firefighter, a cop. It is ridiculous. We should be rewarding work, not just wealth. We should be raising the Corporate Tax rate. This is all within our capacity to do this. So much money. So much in tax breaks for people who dont need them. By the way, the wealthy know they dont need them. They are not bad people, but they dont need another tax cut. If you are making more than 10 million, i am not your guy. You dont need a tax cut. And you know it. But people who dont need a tax cut make sure we can provide for Free Community college. We are in a situation where we could put every single solitary person who is eligible, qualified, and those people who have lost their jobs in their 50s because of automation back to be retrained. We can do that all for about 6 billion a year. Eliminate one little thing, steppedup basis. I didnt know what it was because i used to be listed as the poorest man in congress. If you have a capital gain, you are about to cash it in, you get hit by truck, god forget, leave it to your center dot or, they pay no tax leave it to your son or daughter, they pay no tax. It could for every single qualified person in Community College for free, or trade school. Cutting in half the cost of college. There are so many opportunities we have to change things in this country. In addition to that, i love the fact that there is no global warming. You know that out here in iowa. You know it doesnt exist. I heard a farmer today say it is not caused by humans, but i have a problem. I have a problem. Well, there is a big problem. If we dont provide for people being able to drink position where they can breathe clean air, we deprive them of their basic fundamental rights. The first thing i would do as president of the u. S. Would rejoin the paris climate accord, which i helped put together. [cheers and applause] mr. Biden one thing people dont know about that record which we negotiated, it calls for nations to up the ante every two years. We are responsible for 15 of global warming. The rest of the world is 85 . We do everything perfectly and they dont get on the stick, we are all still in trouble. I know how to deal with these world leaders. I know almost every one of them. I know how to get it done. This is the existential threat to the u. S. And to the world. It is real. And it is not just 11 years. We have about 10 years before we lose the opportunity to stop the erosion that is occurring now. It is real. Heres the deal, you saw what you did with wind. I remember at a state fair 10 years ago, 12 years ago, talking about wind. How you can provide energy from wind. Guess what, a lot of people didnt think it was a good idea. Then you started doing it. It created 10,000 new jobs and didnt cause cancer, as the president says. It generated growth. We can invest. We will invest. 44 billion in research and development for new technologies that deal with sequestering of carbon. You farmers out here can have an entire new life. They can be the first group of americans to actually get a carbonfree environment. If we do this, we will create 10 million new jobs. And its real. If we invest in research, development, technologies that are the technology of the future. We should become the net exporter of this capability and technology. We have the potential to do that. We underestimate our capacity. Going back to health care, we can control drug prices. My proposal is, and i ran what they call the moonshot dealing with cancer, and after that set up the biden cancer initiative. Heres the point, we are on the verge of solving so many chronic diseases. It is within our capacity to do it. But we have to actually go out and fund it. For example, those of you who have been in the defense department, those of you who have been in the military know there is something called darpa. It allows the military to do research. We should be doing the same thing with health care. We should set up the same operation. Harpa, meaning Health Care Advanced research and development. If we dont do something about the disease of alzheimers, every single solitary bed in the United States of america and hospital will be filled with an alltime is patient. No drug company will make that kind of investment. We should be investing billions of dollars just like we did in the defense format with fat obesity, all of the chronic diseases that are out there. We have the capacity to break through. We can do a million billion calculations per second. We are so far advanced that we are keeping our head in the sand. We should be investing in that, not investing in more tax cuts for the very wealthy. Lastly, i say the third reason i am running is to unite the country. Folks, folks, i am told by some of my colleagues that you cannot unite the country. That biden on one side, biden has been around too long. The other is biden is naive. Ive been around a long time. You think being around a long time, you would learn something. What i have learned is that the American People after three years already of this guy have decided that a lot of what he is talking about is hokum. Look this last election in 2018 in the country. I went to 69 candidates i went into purple states and red states and in those states we won back 41 seats. Beating republicans by the way, i want to represent everybody, but heres the deal, the fact of the matter is, we ran on health care. It wasnt until i started taking away health care that everybody they started taking away health care that everybody realized how important it was to cover preexisting conditions. 100,000 people were able to get coverage because of preexisting conditions. On and on. What the proposal is we are able to go out and make sure that everybody is protected. Building on obamacare, restoring the Historic Deal that we did. In addition to that, adding a medicarelike option to it so you can buy into it. Every single but you are able to keep if you like your employerbased policy, you can keep the policy, as long as they keep the policy. It costs a lot of money. It costs about 740 billion over 10 years for the but guess what, it doesnt cost 30 trillion. The mutually dollars 30 trillion, which will raise middleclass taxes. Bernie is going to tell you that. There will be a withholding tax from your paycheck. We can cover everybody. And we can do it in a way that allows people the choice they want. In terms of unifying the country, we never lived up to it, but america has been an idea. It is the most unique idea. Not a joke. The only thing that can defeat america is america. There is no army strong enough, no dictator powerful enough, no ocean wide enough that can overcome what we want to do. We can do whatever we want to do, if we remember we can do it together. [cheers and applause] mr. Biden the reason i did my last announcement in philadelphia was to make a point that we are a nation that is unique. We hold these truths selfevident, that all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator. We the people, etc. We have never fully lived up to that. But we have never abandoned it before. We have never walked away from it. Jefferson didnt live up to it, he had slaves. But every single generation has bent the arc more toward inclusion. Every generation. That is why we are who we are. We are, we are the most unique idea. It is an idea we cannot abandon. And folks, we are better prepared to own the 21st century than any nation in the world by a long shot. When i got elected as a 29yearold kid to the senate, i was labeled this young idealist. This guy who was optimistic. The fact of the matter is, i am more optimistic today, with one exception, than i have ever been. If we get rid of donald trump, we have a clear path. [cheers and applause] folks, we have the most productive workers in the world. Our workers are three times as productive as workers in asia. We are in a situation where we have more Great Research universities in the United States than in all the rest of the world combined. Every major change that has occurred in the last 20 years has come out of a research university. People think they are federal agents. They are not. You own them, you pay for them. They belong to you, the American People. We are in a position where we have the most agile venture capitalists in the world. We have one of the most educated publics in the world, if we in fact invest in them. There isnt anybody or any country in the world who can compete with us if we invest in our people, if we invest in new we are. Remember who we are. There is not a single thing we have been unable to do. This is my concluding comment to you all it is time to remember who in gods name we are. This is the United States of america. There is nothing we have ever decided to do that we have been unable to do, period. That is not hyperbole. We have Never Never Never failed when we are together. It is time to get up. Everybody knows who donald trump is. Even his supporters know who he is. We have got to let them know who we are. We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts. If you are interested, join me. I could use the help. We must defeat this president to change the trajectory of this country. Thank you all very, very much. I guess i take questions now, huh . Dont let anybody know i did not use all my time. I have a Bad Reputation of going over all the time. Yes, sir . Give you a mic, or one, when can i buy you an ice cream . Who is your favorite historical figure who is not a president and why . Mr. Biden yes, you can buy me another ice cream. I already had one. He said, can i buy you an ice cream, and who was my favorite historical figure. I think my favorite historical figure there is a couple of philosophers who i find understood human nature better than most people. But in terms of political figures, maybe my favorite political figure, it is a tough call, i would have to say it is those people who gave america hope. Made them believe in who we are. You said not a president. I would have to start off with jefferson, even though he didnt live up to it. He is the guy that wrote that incredible document. I would have to say there are a number of people who have moved in the direction to provide us with the kind of hope and expectation about what we can do. My favorite line from John Kennedys speech about going to the moon wasnt what most people remember. When i remember the most is when he said, we are doing this because we refuse to postpone. I refuse to postpone any longer what we can do in this country. It is time to get the hell up and start to move. [cheers and applause] mr. Biden yes, maam . [inaudible] mr. Biden 290 billion a year right now. What is my plan . My plan is to gather up i have met with most of the leading scientists in the country already. Most of the meetings and in the country already. My plan is to set up a system whereby we actually invest the kind of money which we are talking, billions of dollars in terms of research which no drug Company Wants to or cant do because they cant take the risk. I am tired of being told we dont have a clear answer. We used to take we used to think cancer was a single cell that resided in different parts of the body. We now know that there are different kinds of cancers that require the different kinds of therapies. The same kind of research has to take place with alzheimers not just to help people who are likely to get alzheimers, but to save the americans this gigantic, positive investment because we pay for it one way or another and we can change the nature, but it requires absolute dedication to say we are going to invest. We can do it, it will take billions of dollars to do it. And we can afford it. We cant afford not to do it. Yes maam. Eight the last years, there has been a rightwing takeover. [indiscernible] the question is, she said itt 30 seconds she said has turned very strongly to the right, the court has turned to the right. I was at Many Supreme Court hearings, and the fact of the matter is that people i will put in the court are the people like a woman who worked for me, elena kagan. The people we put on the court are the folks who understand there is a fundamental thing, those who are lawyers. The question is, are there. Enumerated rights to the constitution . Unless you acknowledge there is a right to privacy in the constitution, most scholars agree, you will not be able to protect a womans right to choose, protect all the things we care so much about. I will not appoint anyone to the court who does not share that basic philosophy. I am coming at you with a question. I am not allowed to answer anymore. I will get dragged off the stage. [applause] thank you, everybody [applause] biden as mys. Grandfather said every time i left the house he said, joey, keep the faith, and my grandma said, no joey, spread it. [applause] sir, your staff is waiting for you here. Here he comes. [applause] here. Over here. Keep coming, sir. Right this way