NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

MR. GREGORY: Your view, as you talk about whether the jobs bill is going to be passed, is that this president does not have a partner among Republicans on Capitol Hill.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: I think he does have a partner in the bulk of the leadership, but they are seriously hamstrung. Look, I can tell you without in any way violating any confidence, I think John Boehner would tell you, I think Eric Cantor would tell you, we had a much bigger proposal that I was personally negotiating with them as to how to deal with the debt crisis, and they could not sell it.

I'm just telling you as straight--I have a bad habit of saying what I believe.

MR. GREGORY: I don't want to get in the way of that now.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Look, guys, I--this is just Joe Biden's impressions. I truly believe if Eric Cantor, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, John Boehner were allowed to settle a deal in the room, we would've had a deal...

MR. GREGORY: But that's not how it works.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: No, it's now how it works. We should take...

MR. GREGORY: Then they're not strong enough leaders to get it passed. Is that your view?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: No. My view is that their party is not the Republican Party that we all know. One of the worst things that has happened to us, in my view, is we need a strong Republican Party. We need a Republican Party that's united. We need a Republican Party you can sit down with and say, "OK, this is the deal, can you deliver? Can you deliver on the deal?"

MR. GREGORY: Is it strong enough of a Republican Party for its nominee to beat this president?

VICE PRES. BIDEN: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's strong enough to beat both of us. It's strong enough--look, look, no, no matter what the circumstance, at the end of the day, the American people right now are--many of them are in real trouble, an even larger percentage are--have stagnant wages, and a significant majority of the American people believe that the country's not moving in the right direction. That is never a good place to be going into re-election. Whether it's your fault or not your fault, it's almost sometimes irrelevant. But what I'm counting on, I'm counting on what I read out there, this judgment of the American people to decide, they know the hole we're in, they know how far we've come out. They're dissatisfied how fast we're going, and they're going to have to choose whether or not the path we have set the country on is the path that we should continue to go or we should go back to liberating the economy.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source