Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Friday that "ending the cowboy mentality of the Bush-McCain era" is part of the solution to the country's financial crisis.
"These guys have worshipped at the shrine of deregulation," Biden told about 1,000 supporters at a women's issues rally at a park in Loudoun County, a Virginia suburb of Washington. Virginia is shaping up to be a key battleground in the Nov. 4 election.
Biden, a longtime U.S. senator chosen by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama as his running mate, jabbed at Republican presidential candidate John McCain's response to the economic crisis, noting that until recently he had said the nation's economic fundamentals are sound.
Biden said there needs to be short-term, immediate intervention to "staunch the bleeding" in the financial markets and that in the long term, "we have to have a major, major overhaul of how the financial system works."
"There are all kinds of ideas Barack and I are putting together right now, but you can't do it haphazardly," said Biden. "Part of the solution is ending the cowboy mentality of the Bush-McCain era."
The McCain campaign countered Biden's rally with a "Women for McCain" press conference a few miles down the road. Susan Allen, wife of former U.S. Sen. George Allen, a Virginia Republican, and Jeri Thompson, wife of former Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, criticized Biden for remarks they characterized as linking higher taxes to patriotism.
"I don't want Joe Biden in my pocketbook. I'm patriotic enough," Allen said.
Allen called Biden "the gift that keeps on giving" and said he is prone to gaffes.
"He does mean well. It's just that things tumble out wrong," said Allen, whose husband's re-election campaign was thwarted after he referred to a young man of Indian descent working on his opponent's campaign as "macaca," which some consider a racial slur.
Republicans jumped on Biden after he said in an interview Thursday: "We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Of those who would pay more, he said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."
At Friday's rally, Biden said "there are a lot patriotic people out there making more than $250,000. ... We just haven't asked anything of them in this crisis."
Obama and Biden have said they will let lapse Bush administration tax cuts for people earning more than $250,000 a year. McCain favors keeping the tax cuts in place.
