Vice President Joe Biden said in a speech that 'lazy American women' brought about the downfall of the economy because they 'sit around on their behinds, doing nothing.
On 26 October 2016, a web site called The Rightists published an article reporting that Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech blaming the 'pitiful' U.S. economy on 'lazy American women': Democratic Vice President Joe Biden wants American women to get back in the workforce to help boost the economy. 'If we just put all the women back to work, if they were able to afford childcare, we would increase the GDP in America by close to eight tenths of one percent,' he said. 'That's trillions of dollars over the next decade.' Biden made his remarks during a campaign event for Hillary Clinton at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. 'The state of our economy could be characterized by a single word: pitiful,' he argued. 'We're still battling recession, I don't care what the official stats are saying, America is still in recession. And we're not doing anything about it.' He added that it was 'lazy American women' who brought about the downfall of the economy, because 'they sit around on their behinds, doing nothing and squandering their days away when they could be improving the country that has given so much to them.' 'I'm not sure how exactly we got to this point, but we're here and we need to move. Like, yesterday,' he said. Tying his remarks to the 2016 presidential election, the article quotes Biden as saying, 'Hillary Clinton is the only one who can force American women to go to work.' However, despite containing one or two sentences actually spoken by Biden (e.g., 'If we just put all the women back to work, if they were able to afford childcare, we would increase the GDP in America by close to eight tenths of one percent'), the article was mostly fiction. It was an attempt to satirize a real speech Biden gave in support of the Clinton campaign on 25 October 2016 which included this pitch for reducing the cost of childcare: Ladies in the audience, you realize there's millions of Americans women completely thoroughly qualified to be in the workforce but are not there now. Why? The cost of childcare. If you live in any city in America from a small town - a small city to New York City, you have two kids, a minimum $10,700 a year for adequate child care, $22,000 a year if you live in New York City. Ladies and gentleman, child care in Pennsylvania - average cost $14,700 for a family with two kids. That's why women aren't in the work force. If Republicans talk about productivity, they haven't produced anything that generates economic growth so far - not a joke. If we just put all the women back to work if they were able to afford childcare, we would increase the GDP in America by close to eight tenths of one percent. That's trillions of dollars over the next decade. The Rightists web site describes itself as follows (grammatical errors are in the original): This is HYBRID site of news and satire. part of our stories already happens, part, not yet. NOT all of our stories are true! Courtesy of C-SPAN, here is a video of Biden's speech in its entirety:
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