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Joe Biden Gaffes of the Month
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Hold on now... he's only human.
#1: Carol Burger
Just before his trip to Poland, Joe Biden announced the Middle Class Task Force’s 2009 Recovery Through Retrofit program. They agreed to allocate $80 billion to improve energy efficiency of buildings. The government is working on creating a homeowner performance standard label, which will measure a home’s energy consumption and propose ways that consumers can save by retrofitting their homes. They’ve also promised to free up access to grants and loans up to $454 million under the Recovery Act. Joe must have been so excited about this news – or distracted about his upcoming flight to Poland – that he forgot who he was giving shout-outs to. He accidentally called out to “Carol Burger,” who was actually Anna Burger. He then excused himself and explained that he had gone to school with a Carol Burger… you know, decades ago… it was an honest mistake.
#2: Spilling the Automaker's Beans
“[The Vice President] definitely told what our product plans are,” laughed Henrik Fisker, CEO of Fisker Automotive in Delaware. Biden appeared at a plant tour and press conference at the newly acquired automotive production plant that is expected to create 2,000 factory jobs and 3,000 vendor jobs by 2014. Biden told UAW workers, “Imagine when this factory, when the floor we’re standing on right now is making 100,000 plug-in hybrid sedan, coupes and crossovers every single year." We already heard about Project Nina, a plug-in hybrid that will cost less than $40,000, but we had no idea the automaker would churn out 100,000 copies of the untested design model or that coupes and crossovers would be added to the mix. Biden also mentioned that the new sedan looks like “a four-door Ferrari.” It’ll be another five years or so before Fisker begins making cars in the US, so some say the gaffe doesn’t really matter… but it does make you smile, doesn’t it?
#3: Aides Gone Wild
Perhaps it is Joe Biden’s aide, Jared Bernstein, who now finds himself in the Gaffe-Master Hot Seat. In an unusual moment, he made a rather conservative statement about the big bonus-paying banks, saying: “Once you’ve paid back the TARP, you’re a private sector firm out there and you can set compensation wherever you see fit.” While Joe the Biden has remained mum on the subject, President Obama’s “Pay Czar,” Kenneth R. Feinberg, says that renegotiating pay packages and bonuses at AIG is a “top priority” for 2010. It is his view that the US government should not regulate pay beyond the 7 firms that received bail-out money: AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, General Motors, Chrysler, GMAC Financial and Chrysler Financial. "I wouldn't cite any company out there and say ‘you're good, you're bad.’ I would point out that coming out from under the TARP is positive in terms of paying us back," Biden’s aide added. Those in attendance at the American University Q&A session were not satisfied with Bernstein’s response. Professors Stanley Weiss and Carolina Peguero felt these companies are “very much indebted” to the American people and that there should be some “repercussions.”
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