Biden Rallies with Supporters of 'Back to Work' Act

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) joined hundreds of public employees and Vice President Joe Biden at a rally Wednesday to urge passage of the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) also spoke.

An overflow crowd of teachers, firefighters, police officers and union activists, including CWAers, joined Vice President Joe Biden for a rally inside the Russell Senate Building on Wednesday to call for passage of the Teachers and First Responders Back to Work Act (S. 1723).

"Watch them and see how they choose," Biden said. "Are they going to put 300,000 teachers back in the classroom, 15,000 firefighters back on the job and thousands of police officers back on the beat or vote to save people with incomes of more than $1 million a one-half of 1 percent increase on the their taxes for every dollar they make over a million?"

Biden stressed that President Obama and his advisors worked hard to craft a jobs bill that Republicans could support, only to have the GOP continue to play games with Americans' lives. The bill, "wasn't designed to put Republicans on the spot. It was designed to do something to help this country," he said.

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