Vice President Joe Biden hit the battleground state of Florida Wednesday amid rising speculation he will challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
Though he made a joke, and at one point sounded a little like Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, Biden never dropped any hints on his intentions.
“It’s amazing how good this school looks,” Biden said at the Science Center at Miami Dade College. “Look at all the press you’ve attracted. Their interest in community colleges impresses me greatly. I hope that’s what they are going to write about.”
Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the Miami Dade College on the importance of helping more Americans go to college September 2, 2015 in Miami, Florida. Biden spoke about the critical role that partnerships between community colleges and employers play in helping Americans obtain the skills they need to succeed in the workforce. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
On Thursday, Biden meets with Jewish leaders in Miami to try to sell the Iran deal. On Monday, he is traveling to Pittsburgh for Labor Day events, and then on Sept. 10, he’s appearing on Stephen Colbert’s show on CBS.
Trump has frequently talked about bringing back jobs from China, and the need to build more infrastructures. These themes aren’t uncommon for Biden, but in the midst of the 2016 chatter, it stood out.
“We have the mot productive workers in the world. I’m tired of hearing from some of my conservative friends how the American public and the American people don’t want to work,” Biden said. “By every objective study, American workers are three times as productive as Chinese workers. That’s not a criticism of Chinese workers. It’s an observation about the American people. That’s why they are coming home. To take full of advantage of this opportunity and moment in history, we have to do two things. There is not a single person who will deny we have to do these two things. One is we have to have the most modern infrastructure in the world, and we don’t.”
Biden said, “We need to spend $6.3 trillion on infrastructure, modernizing, by 2020 just to keep up.”
He further talked about the Obama administration’s proposal to make community college free.
“The second thing we to do, we need to listen to my wife’s admonition, we need the best educated public in the world so that when new technologies are brought back and stay here, we can fill all of those jobs,” Biden said.
Biden: "American workers are three times more productive than Chinese workers." Then talks infrastructure. Sounds almost like Trump.
