Biden: U.S. ready for 'collaboration'

[babylonsister]

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/03/biden_us_ready_for_collaborati.html


Biden: U.S. ready for 'collaboration'
Posted March 28, 2009 5:00 PM


Vice President Joe Biden and Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner at the Progressive Governance Leaders' Summit today in Vina del Mar, Chile. (Photo by Martin Bernett / AFP / Getty Images.)

by Mark Silva


The world doesn't have the United States to kick around anymore - or at least, to us, that's what it would appear that Vice President Joe Biden was saying in Chile today.-- with Biden suggesting that the U.S. is now willng to collaborate with the rest of the world, but will also insist that everyone follow "the rules of the road.''

Biden, addressing the opening of The Progressive Governance Conference in Vina del Mar, Chile, today, spoke of the Obama administration's wide-ranging agenda.

"We are aggressively attacking a full set of challenges that are facing our economy,'' Biden told his international audience. "We expect the recession to end later this year. But .. employment will lag far behind. We're still going to have a very, very difficult circumstance in our country -- and most of our countries -- even when the GDP begins to grow again, as it hasn't in our country. We're technically in -- not technically, in fact, in recession. So unemployment is likely to continue rising.

"At the same time, the most important thing we can do during this whole process -- and it's going to begin at the G-20 (summit of major economic powers next week) -- is to reset the rules of the road, to have common sense oversight that keeps us from getting back into the same spot we're in 10 years from now,'' Biden said.

"President Obama and I sought these offices because we had a fundamental disagreement with the policies of the last administration,'' Biden said. "We don't question the motive of the last administration -- we question seriously their policies. And it's a little bit like that old metaphor -- it takes a while to turn around a super-tanker. We are moving as rapidly as we can to change the direction of our country and our policies, but we're going to have to ask -- and we don't expect to get it, but we have to ask for a little bit of patience as we move forward....

"We genuinely want to be collaborative. We genuinely want to engage in consultation. We genuinely want to know what others think,'' he said. "We do not look to ourselves as the engine to solve the problems; we only look to ourselves in joining you to jointly solve the problems...

snip//

"And so the good news is there's a change. The bad news is, for you all, there's a change,'' Biden said to laughter among his audience. "Te very good news is that we're willing to, and want to collaborate. The bad news is that you don't have the last administration to use as an excuse.... for non-action.''