2012 – Vote for the party, or vote for the candidate?

“Biden Says 2012 Election Is Choice on Who Offers ‘Better Path’

By Alex Kowalski - Oct 23, 2011 12:32 PM ET

Vice President Joe Biden said voters in the 2012 U.S. presidential election will face a choice on which political party offers a better plan to “get the economy moving.”

“Whoever is our opponent will be tough,” Democrat Biden said today on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Voters are “going to have to decide, and they will decide, whether or not we’re on the right path or if the other team is offering a better path. When people begin to focus, I think the choice is going to become awfully clear.”

Boosting employment is central to galvanizing the U.S. economy, Biden said. Democrats began trying to pass President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs proposal in pieces after the Senate blocked consideration of the full plan on Oct 12. The full plan would expand a payroll tax break due to expire at the end of this year, increase spending on public works projects and extend jobless benefits.

Private economists projected the jobs bill would increase the country’s gross domestic product by 2 percent, Biden said. A Republican alternative wouldn’t create jobs, according to Biden.

Speaking later on the CNN show, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has led opposition against the jobs package, countered Biden’s view of the 2012 elections as a “choice.”

“It will be a referendum, a referendum on the president and on his performance,” said McConnell, a Kentucky Republican. Americans would like to see policy makers get their “house in order,” McConnell said. The private sector needs the federal government to “quit spending, quit borrowing, quit over- regulating and quit threatening to raise taxes,” he said.

Biden, asked whether he’d consider running for president in 2016, said he wasn’t “closing anything.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Kowalski in Washington atakowalski13@bloomberg.net”