Vice President Mike Pence said Friday that former vice president Joe Biden is “advocating a socialist agenda,” as are his fellow candidates for the Democratic nomination.
“I think the choice that we face in this country today is a choice between freedom and socialism,” Pence told CNBC in an interview.
He added that Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is an avowed democratic socialist, are “advocating a socialist agenda of more government, higher taxes and the same tired policies that created the malaise of the last administration where we saw less than 2 percent economic growth.”
CNBC notes that the U.S. actually exceeded 2 percent annual growth during the Obama Administration, and may have passed 3 percent depending on how it’s measured.
Pence went on to address Biden’s downplaying the economic threat posed by China at a campaign stop this week.
“While we hear one of the latest candidates for president ... say that China doesn’t represent a competition of the United States, you know they’re half of our international trade deficit,” the vice president said. “And forced technology transfers and intellectual property theft are a reality.”
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