Sheriff Biden vs. Naysayin' Cantor

 Looks like the “Attack-Dog Biden” we so loved on the ’08 campaign trail is back... but with a few obedience lessons. Perhaps his advisors told him to "turn that frown upsidedown" and play nice in the sandbox with Republicans, but also to remind Americans that the stimulus dollars are flowing from the spigot for the good of all humanity.

 

Biden breezed through House Republican Whip Eric Cantor’s home state of Virginia today with these bold words for the outspoken critic. Cantor has been quoted as saying, “For the stimulus alone, Washington has borrowed $10,000 from every American household. Let me ask you: Do you feel $10,000 richer today?” He’s also called their “cap and trade policies” a “job-killer,” accused that the administration “miswrote the stimulus bill and got the prescription wrong,” and referred to the stimulus as “a flop.” Did he really think Papa Biden would let these comments go unnoticed?   

 

I hoped that Biden would roll through and slam Cantor in his old way... maybe say he is "full of malarkey," or say that he has "no notion of what's going on," or make accusations that he's "unqualified" to speak on issue of the economy. Remember the good old days when he attacked Rudy Giuliani during the primaries, saying: "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence -- a noun, a verb and 9/11"...? And remember when he touched upon the latest McCain controversy, joking that "He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables he'll sit down at" (to worry about how to pay the bills, like many other middle class families). He always seemed to know which issues could really suck the life out of a Republican campaign. Yet now, it seems his wit has been stifled. He's instructed to adhere to some clear talking points... and he's not allowed to be nasty.

 

Biden never singled out Cantor by name. It appears he’s trying to take the high road here, the optimistic road, and avoid political mudslinging. However, as the Republican Whip, Cantor has nothing to lose and everything to gain by attacking the administration. Cantor really unleashed on the Admin today, rebutting, "Where I'm looking is where families of Virginia and America are looking -- and that's at the unemployment rate, which is skyrocketing. The reality is that people are losing their jobs. Families are going into economic free-fall." He added that the Recovery Act is "a bill full of pork barrel spending, government waste and massive borrowing, cleverly called 'stimulus.' Obama's economic decisions have not produced jobs, have not produced prosperity and simply have not worked." Clearly Biden's going to have to step it up to keep pace with these formidable Republican attacks that prey upon American sensibilities, so eloquently echoing what the rest of us are thinking.

 

The best Biden can do is offer us a few updates at Recovery.gov, where curious individuals can take it upon themselves to look up how stimulus spending is unfurling in their own backyards and across the nation. "Unprecedented transparency has been one of the hallmarks of our implementation of the Recovery Act," Biden said in a release today. "And the new interactive maps now available on Recovery.gov showing how Recovery dollars are moving to states, contractors, grantees and other recipients are an important next step in making a historic amount of information available to the public." While the notion of "transparency" is a nice change from the previous administration, one has to wonder what the resounding benefit of such transparency actually is. In New York state, for instance, I see (on this virtual map) a whole lot of zeros and money that hasn't been paid out. I see $2 allocated to the State Department (?), and I see a lot of vagueness -- like money for the "Department of Transportation" or the "Department of Defense." Yet, if the website were truly efficient at encouraging Americans, then Joe wouldn't need to travel around so much, touting stimulus dollars, now would he?

 

Eric Cantor is just one of many discontent voices rising up, bringing Obama-Biden approval numbers down. As you may recall, Biden traipsed through John Boehner’s Ohio last week to tout the stimulus, to which Boehner could only say, “I found it...interesting over the last couple of days to hear Vice President Biden and the President mention the fact that they didn't realize how difficult an economic circumstance we were in.... This is the greatest fabrication I have seen since I've been in Congress." At first, we thought the Republicans were just lashing out with all the criticism and no answers, that they were an Old News party that had nothing to offer us anymore now that the Dynamic Duo was in the White House. But sadly, as the foreclosures and jobless rates continue to climb, the rest of us are starting to listen.