Joe Biden: GOP Presidential Field Concerned About 'Privileged Class'

Vice President Joe Biden told Ohio union workers Thursday the Obama administration's bail out of the auto industry was a clear example of the differences between the president's economic agenda and GOP presidential candidates who are concerned with the privileged class.

At a campaign stop in a United Auto Workers local's hall in Toledo, Biden said the auto bailout showed how the Republican presidential field -- mentioning the top three candidates by name -- have a fundamentally different economic philosophy than the Obama administration.

We're about promoting the private sector, Biden said. They're about protecting the privileged sector.

Remarks from Biden, on the first of four campaign stops, were part of a dual assault on the Republican presidential hopefuls; President Barack Obama, in Maryland Thursday to talk about energy policy, said the candidates were stuck in the past.

Meanwhile, Biden ripped into their opposition to an auto bailout plan that propped up GM and Chrysler. The number of jobs created and saved by the intervention was proof that validated Obama's decision to go forward with the bailout, Biden said.

Biden: GOP Did Not Want TO Help Auto Sector

The vice president reminded the crowd of union autoworkers when Mitt Romney said he wanted Detroit to go bankrupt and Newt Gingrich called the bailout a mistake.

But the guy I work with every day, the president, he didn't flinch. This was a man with steel in his spine, Biden said. He knew resurrecting the industry wouldn't be popular; it was clear in every bit of polling data. But he believed.

The verdict is in, Biden added. President Obama was right and they were dead wrong.

Biden tied the success of the auto bailout with a rebounding, if sluggish, econony, saying the Republicans' economic policies are bankrupt.

If you give any one of these guys the keys to the White House, Biden said, they will bankrupt the middle class again.