We have two candidates with two different visions for America.
Here are excerpts from their recent speeches. There are links to their full speeches included.
Joe Biden, Nevada:
"(My dad) used to always say, “The fact is Joey, I’m not looking for government to solve my problems but I hope like hell they can at least understand my problems.” He finally got a job, we could afford to buy a small home. He worked hard to build a decent middle class life. It wasn’t easy for him, but he had an expression.
As I said, a job job's about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in the community. It’s being able to look your kid in the eye and say, “Honey, it’s going to be okay.” You deserve a president who understands what you’re going through. Who sees you where you are and where you want to be.
The last thing you need is a president who ignores you, looks down upon you, who just doesn’t understand who in God’s name we are. That’s President Trump. His reckless personal conduct since his diagnosis. The destabilizing effect it’s having on our government is unconscionable. He didn’t take the necessary precautions to protect himself or others. And the longer Donald Trump is President, the more reckless he gets. How can we trust him to protect this country?
More than 210,000 Americans are dead. 420,000 have been hospitalized. We lose anywhere from 700 to a thousand people every single day in America, worse than any country in the world. More than 7.5 million Americans have been infected. And we’re still counting.
With you and I it’s all about family. Losing family is a devastating thing. We can do so much better. My heart goes out to everyone struggling with the economic crisis caused by the neglect, the simple neglect of this President. Nearly 11 million jobs lost since the beginning of this crisis. And they still haven’t come back, including 136,000 jobs here in Nevada. Temporary layoffs have turned to permanent layoffs.
All told, there are now 30 million workers who either lost hours, lost paychecks, or lost their jobs entirely. Roughly 700,000 people have dropped out of the labor force last month. And the vast majority were women. We’re still down 647,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide since the crisis has started. And our balance of payments deficit is going up. And here in Nevada, the unemployment rate is 13.2%, the highest in the nation because of President Trump’s negligence. The hospitality industry has hit particularly hard. The culinary union, has recently said publicly that 50% of their members are still out of work. Tourism in June was down 70% from a year ago. The result? President Trump will be the first president in modern history since Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than he had when he came into office.
It’s a K-shaped recession where those at the top keep going up and the middle-class and everyone else keeps going down, getting worse. Means essential workers who sacrificed to keep us going through this pandemic are being left behind by the most unequal recovery in modern history. You get this, the top 100 billionaires in America have done pretty well. Just in the pandemic, the top 100 billionaires have made an additional $300 billion, top 100. But you get the bottom half of that K and it’s a downward slide. You’re left to figure out how you’re going to pay your bills, put food on the table. So much food insecurity in America, in this state. How to balance doing your job with being a teacher for your kids because of the negligence of the President, they can’t go back to school because they haven’t provided the wherewithal for schools to open.
And as people struggled and suffered, what did they focus on? If this wasn’t so serious, you’d think I’m making it up. What they focused on is more tax cuts for the wealthy, not a joke. They’re proposal adds another $30 billion tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. Cuts in funding. Cutting the means by which we fund the Social Security system, leading the actuary of Social Security to say if they do it, by 2023, mid-2023, there’ll be no money for Social Security.
And a relentless effort to eliminate, as Alejandro said, the Affordable Care Act, which provides healthcare coverage for 22 million people, over 100 million with pre-existing conditions. This is going on at the same time he’s already cost 10 million people their health insurance because their companies have gone bankrupt. It’s unconscionable. Instead of focusing on our needs, your needs, he’s trying to take your healthcare away. He’s literally before the Supreme Court as I speak to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act, take away that healthcare for 20 million Americans. That’s 282,000 Nevadans. Take away federal protections for preexisting conditions, 1.2 million Nevadans. And complications from COVID like lung scarring and heart damage could well become the next pre-existing condition. Striking down the Affordable Care Act would toss out the rule that allows our children to be covered on their parents’ insurance policy until age 26. Take us backward when insurance companies could change a woman more for healthcare than a man for the same procedure, just because she’s a woman. Take away Medicare benefits for seniors. Increase their drug prescription costs.
Democrats know how to get things done. Here’s how my plan works. It’s not going to raise a penny in tax for anyone making less than $400,000 a year. Not a penny. And how am I going to pay for all this? I’m going to ask the big corporations and the wealthy to start paying their fair share. You realize that the Fortune 500 companies, 92 of them making billions of dollars, don’t pay a single penny in taxes. It’s wrong.
We’re going to grow the middle class to make sure everyone’s included on the deal.
The kinds of investment that will stimulate the economy, including industries like tourism and hospitality. To get back to full employment fast and help build back better than before.
Building roads, bridges, highways, ports, airports, and clean energy. Upgrading four million buildings and weatherizing, two million homes, creating at least a million good paying jobs in the process. Making the climate safer, saving hundreds of millions of barrels of oil. We’ll deal with climate change by creating millions of union jobs that build a climate resilience of our cities and our towns fighting back stronger, more frequent wildfires. Beating heat waves, droughts, hurricanes, and floods.
Under my plan, small business come out the other side of this crisis with access to capital and the ability to deal with their debts. We’re going to get $50 billion in new capital, especially for minority owned businesses and small businesses. We’re going to make another hundred billion dollars in low-interest loans available to these businesses, creating jobs, increasing economic growth and increasing incomes.
We’ll build the Affordable Care Act, writing knew health insurance options, not for-profit public options, which give private insurers a real competitor. We’re going to increase subsidies for premiums and lower your costs. Increase plans that will lower deductibles and lower out of pocket expenses. And we’re going to take on the pharmaceutical industry with a plan that will slash costs of prescription drugs by 50%.
The reason I’m not going to more detail, you’ve been out here a long time, let’s give me one example. If in fact Medicare is able to negotiate for all the drugs they buy and say you’re not going to be able to sell them to them unless you pay the price we’re suggesting, that would drop by 60% the cost the cost of drugs.
We’ll also make high quality childcare available and accessible. We’ll work with the states to ensure that every three, four year old will get access to free, high quality preschool. Not, not, not daycare. We’re going to make sure low and middle income families never have to spend more than 7% of their income to care for young children. Because if we truly want to reward work in this country, we have to ease the financial burdens that created the care for families that are caring for raising a child and an aging loved one.
The fact is, President of the United States can only see the world from Park Avenue. He thinks Wall Street built this country and CEOs. I see the world from where I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Claymont. Communities like some that you live in. I know the middle-class working people built this country. The measure of economic success has been what our families are talking about around the kitchen table. Are you able to look your kid in the eye and say, “Honey, it’s going to be okay?”
I’m running as a proud Democrat, but I’m going to govern as an American president. The work is hard for those who don’t support me as those who do, because after all this country has been through, after all that America has accomplished, after all the years, we stood as a beacon of light to the world we cannot be that here and now, in 2020, we allow the government, the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to perish from this earth.
Folks, we have it our hands. And I made this in the bottom of heart, we have in our hands the ultimate power. And what’s the ultimate power in a democracy? The power to vote.
We can be better than what we’ve seen. We can be what we are at our best, the United States of America. I’m confident we can bring Democrats and Republicans together again with him gone. Folks, conclude by saying there has never, ever, ever been anything the United States has been unable to accomplish when we’ve done it together. Never, never, never. So folks let’s stand up and vote and take back this country now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Joe Biden Nevada speech transcript
Donald Trump, Janesville:
“The Democrat Party you once knew doesn’t exist.”
(Democrats) want to protect criminals and disarm law-abiding Americans. They want to take away your Second Amendment. If Biden wins, the lawless demonstrators in our streets and you see them all the time.
This Election Day, the people of Wisconsin must stop these anti-American radicals by issuing sleepy Joe Biden -- he has no clue anyway. Look, let's not kid ourselves, let's not kid ourselves. He's shot, OK? I don't care. Think of it. Think of it because this puts pressure on you.
If you give the power to the Democrats, the radical left will defund, disband, disarm, and dismantle police departments all across America.
They're going to release 400,000 criminals onto your streets and into your neighborhoods. If crazy Joe becomes President, it's not even conceivable.
While turning the entire country into one giant sanctuary for criminals, illegal aliens, including those charged with rape, assault, murder, killing -- For the -- and the wall is almost built.
Biden was silent as radicals, anarchists, arsonists, and vandals, rampaged through Democrat-run cities in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Seattle, Portland, and other places. Biden called them peaceful protesters. You'll see, they're sick people, they've got a lot of problems, but fortunately, they're not doing so well. The police went out and they charged, it was an incredible thing. You know because today everyone wants to be so damned politically correct. The police are afraid if they touch somebody or speak to somebody rudely, they'll be destroyed, their pension will be gone, their family will be gone. Biden referred to police as the enemy.
We have done more for the Black community than any President with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, it's true, it's true. Criminal justice reform, Obama couldn't do it. I don't even think he tried to do it, frankly.
Before the China virus hit us, we were there and we were getting calls because the success was bringing us together as a country. We had the greatest employment numbers. We had the greatest African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, women, people with a diploma, people without a diploma, people that graduated first in their class at MIT, everybody.
Then we got hit by the China virus and it was back to the drawing boards, but the country was coming together and it's going to come together.
It's going to be a success and next year we're going to have the most successful year economically had they -- that we've ever.
This election is a choice between a Trump super recovery and a Biden depression. And you know they're going to raise your taxes substantially like quadruple. Because the only candidate -- you know, all my life I've been involved in politics never from this side, but you know a few years ago I said, let's give it a shot.
If he gets in and it's not him, again, it's his people that tell him what to do. If he gets in, you'll have the greatest depression in the history of this country. Your stocks will go to hell.
If you vote for me, prosperity will surge, normal life will fully resume, and the next year will be the greatest year economically in the history of our country. Joe Biden would terminate our recovery with a draconian unscientific lockdown.
This political class has nothing but disdain for you and for your values. They flood your communities with criminal aliens, drugs, and crime while living behind gated compounds and communities.
If you happen to touch a tree, they want to put you in jail for the rest of your life.
Let's not talk about the wall anymore. So now we're never going to go take -- but Mexico's not paying. No, no, Mexico is paying.
The Biden plan would destroy your Social Security and destroy protections for people with pre-existing conditions you don't know that.
A vote for Republicans is a vote for safe communities, great job, just incredible jobs, and a limitless future for all Americans. It's really about the American dream.
We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students and restore patriotic education to our schools. We will teach our children to love our country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag. You, you -- and we will live by the timeless words of our national motto, In God We Trust.
Look at your stocks, look at those 401(k)s. How would you feel if it went down by 100%? You can only go up. We have made America strong again, we have made America proud again, we have made America safe again, and we will make America great again. Thank you, Wisconsin. Thank you."