Review-Journal: Beau Biden criticizes ‘obstructionist’ GOP

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Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden on Saturday urged Clark County Democrats to overcome “obstructionist Republican policies” by working hard to re-elect President Barack Obama and maintain control of the U.S. Senate.

The son of Vice President Joe Biden also took a few swipes at Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney, including for saying home values should be allowed to “hit bottom.”

“Obama gets it,” Biden told the county party’s convention. “Do you think Mitt Romney gets it? He doesn’t get it.”

The Obama campaign sent Biden to fire up the Democratic troops in the most populous county of Nevada, a battleground state the president needs to win again in 2012 to return to the White House.

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About 1,400 Democrats attended Saturday’s convention at the Riviera. A total of 1,096 were elected delegates to the state convention to be held June 9-10 in Las Vegas.

At the state convention, the party will elect 44 delegates to attend the Democratic National Convention in September in Charlotte, N.C., where Obama will formally accept the presidential nomination.

Biden and other headline speakers at the Clark County meeting argued that the best reason to return Obama to the White House is so he can finish what he started to revive the economy.

The president inherited a recession, and many states haven’t recovered, including Nevada, which has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 12.3 percent.

“There’s much work to be done,” Biden said, including ensuring banks don’t take advantage of people caught in the home foreclosure crisis that has hit Southern Nevada hard.

Biden and Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who introduced him, led efforts in the states and by the Obama administration to win a $25 billion settlement from the five largest lending banks to help people whose homes are in foreclosure or have already been foreclosed.

Biden also made a pitch for the Senate to pass the “Buffett Rule,” which would tax people making at least $1 million in income at a 30 percent rate. The GOP opposes it because it will do little to reduce the debt and deficit spending.

Biden decried GOP opposition, saying the word “compromise” is no longer in the Republican vocabulary.

“The Republicans literally have not been using that word,” Biden said. “That’s a statement in itself when you have Republicans who are fearful of using the word ‘compromise.’”

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