Vice President Joe Biden on Friday attacked Paul Ryan’s plans to reform entitlements in Florida. He then continued to use Paul Ryan’s budget numbers to attack Mitt Romney’s plans for the future and said what he was doing was “fair.”
Biden said, “if Congressman Ryan felt so strongly about insisting that this plan become law, and if Governor Romney said he would’ve signed it into law… then it goes to their motive, it goes to who you believe.”
Biden accused Romney and Ryan of wanting to raise taxes on social security benefits, which he said would cost seniors $460. That number was derived from a Tax Policy study conducted by a former Obama administration official.
He also cited a CBO study estimate that determined Ryan’s “premium support” plan could cost seniors $6,400 more in health care costs in 2022 to attack Romney for wanting to raise health care costs on seniors, even though Romney has not released details of his own plan.
The Romney campaign said Biden “fabricated” his attacks and they would “backfire when voters learn he has repeatedly supported higher Social Security taxes, and that seniors face a 25 percent across-the-board benefit cut because of President Obama’s failure to lead on this issue.”
The Tax Policy Center study was also based on assumptions the authors made about Romney’s budget, which he has not even fully detailed.
Biden himself has been all over the place on entitlements in the past. In 1993, he voted to raise taxes on Social Security benefits for “higher income beneficiaries.” And even though he criticizes Ryan on entitlement reform, Biden said in 2007 he would want “everything” on the table to reform entitlements in a “Meet The Press” appearance.
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