Vice President Joe Biden, a possible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, on Saturday made reference to two would-be Republican opponents in the next election.

At a fundraiser for Democratic House candidates in New York City, Biden brought up Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential nominee, in a speech to party donors.

According to a pool report, the vice president cast both Republicans as extremists but offered them personal compliments. Biden called Paul, the son of former Texas Rep. Ron Paul "a fine man ... a decent man."

Of Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman whose 2014 fiscal blueprint won approval this week in the House, Biden won laughs with his incredulity.

"The Ryan budget is absolutely -- the Ryan budget," Biden said.

The vice president has signaled that he might run for president himself in 2016 despite having twice unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination. A Biden candidacy could pit him against another alumna of the Obama administration, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, should she decide to run.

But Biden himself noted that there were a "long four years" ahead of him and President Barack Obama, during which they hoped to "get some good things done."

ON THE CAMPAIGN CHARTER HEADING TO OHIO -- The same day as the first presidential debate of the 2012 election, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan will begin a three-day debate camp.

Campaign spokesman Brendan Buck told reporters aboard the Ryan press charter Saturday afternoon Rep. Ryan will head to the battleground state of Virginia on Wednesday for an extended debate prep session, commonly referred to as ‘debate camp.’

No reason for selecting Virginia was given, however, advisers in the past have said the camp would likely be in a battleground state, likely in the Eastern time zone, and “somewhere where there aren’t distractions.”

Mitt Romney, who will be debating President Barack Obama in Denver on Wednesday, held his own debate camp in Vermont in early September.

Portman joins Romney for debate prep in Vermont

Ryan’s first formal debate prep day was Sept. 9 in Oregon with his most recent formal debate practice session held this past Sunday in a hotel in Janesville, Wis. Ted Olson, the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, has been playing the part of Vice President Joe Biden during practice sessions and is expected to be in the Old Dominion state next week as well.

Paul Ryan holes up for debate

Ryan and Biden will debate just once during this election in Danville, Ky., on Oct. 11 – exactly two months after Ryan was tapped as Romney’s running mate, also in Virginia where debate camp will occur.

The campaign told the traveling press a few weeks ago that the seven-term Wisconsin congressman has been going through large white binders -- “organized by issue areas” -- of policy information, research, and news of the day since the Republican National Convention ended at the end of August.

While there has not been much discussion regarding the VP debate in terms of debate expectations -- as most eyes are on the first presidential debate in four days -- two Ryan advisers appeared to downplay expectations for the House Budget Chairman when they spoke to the traveling press in Reno, Nev., in early September.

“Vice President Joe Biden served over 30 years in the United States Senate, he has run for president twice and has severed as vice president for the past four years. He is one of the most experienced debaters in American political life and we definitely don’t take the challenge lightly,” an adviser said.

Ryan focuses heavily on raising money Sunday and Monday -- holding fundraisers throughout Connecticut and New York City – before heading to the key state of Iowa for four campaign events. He will then turn his focus to debate prep leading up to the final weekend before the debate in Kentucky.

TOLEDO, Ohio -- In the White House's most aggressive singling out of its Republican rivals to date, Vice President Joe Biden slammed Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum by name during his first public campaign event of the 2012 cycle.

Addressing more than 500 union members and supporters at United Auto Workers Local 12 here, Biden touted the administration's backing of the auto industry bailout, saying that the GOP presidential candidates were "dead wrong" in their opposition to the measure.

"Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich," he said. "These guys have a fundamentally different economic philosophy than we do."

He specifically noted Romney's 2008 op-ed entitled "Let Detroit go bankrupt" -- greeted with raucous boos -- as well as Gingrich's labeling of the bailout as a "mistake," and Santorum's statement that the measure catered to Obama's political interests.

"Look, I want to tell you what's real bankruptcy," the vice president said. "The economic theories of Gingrich, Santorum, and Romney. They are bankrupt."

Biden dismissed as inaccurate the Republican sentiment that, without government intervention, the private sector would have stepped in to the void to aid the ailing automotive sector. With a particular tweak at Romney, Biden noted that Bain Capital -- the company that Romney once led -- declined an offer from the President's Auto Task Force to invest in GM's European operations.

In contrast, he said the president showed his "spine of steel" by backing the financial rescue of an "iconic industry America invented."

In his characteristic booming voice, Biden stated at the beginning of his remarks, "We bet on American ingenuity; we bet on you; and we won!"

The top surrogate's utterance of the candidates' names is a departure from the president's own rhetoric. The White House has largely avoided specific mention of any of the candidates, even as the DNC maintains a sharp focus on delegate-frontrunner Romney.

The vice president also argued that Democrats represent economic fairness in comparison to what he described as crony-embracing Republicans.

"Stated simply, we're about promoting the private sector," he said. "They're about protecting the privileged sector."

Biden was introduced by Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who just defeated fellow Democrat Dennis Kucinich in a redistricting-fueled primary contest. The event had a notably political feel, with chants of, "Four more years!" and, "Go, Joe, go!" reverberating from the sign-wielding crowd.

This was not Biden's first visit to UAW Local 12; he visited the same venue in October 2010 to stump for then-Gov. Ted Strickland.

AP

Vice President Joe Biden (D)

Vice President Joe Biden lashed out at critics today who have claimed that his and the President's efforts to get a job's bill passed is mere "campaigning." 

"Are we campaigning?"  he said. "Yes! We are campaigning to change this environment." 

Biden was in York, Pa., visiting the Goode Elementary School to argue that the American Jobs Act would support 400,000 education jobs. 

Because of budget cuts, the York School District has been forced to lay off 100 teachers.

Waxing at times poetic, Biden stressed the importance of education in keeping the nation competitive.

"If our students suffer, our future suffers,” Biden said, adding, "They are the kite strings that lift our national ambitions aloft."

Vice President Joe Biden received attention -- and plenty of GOP criticism -- when he said on his recent trip to China that he's "not second-guessing" that nation's one-child policy.

“You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I'm not second-guessing -- of one child per family,” Biden said in remarks discussing China's social-safety net. “The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.”

But there was one major point missing from the debate over Biden's controversial remarks: The Chinese government, it turns out, has quietly been "second-guessing" its one-child policy for quite some time, given its aging population and millions of grooms without brides on the horizon.

For one thing, the massive Chinese population is getting older, which means a shrinking workforce. Indeed, the most recent national census in April revealed that the proportion of mainland Chinese people aged 14 or younger was 16.6%, down by more than 6 percentage points from a decade ago.

So some local governments are encouraging parents to think about adding more to the family. Two years ago, for instance, the Shanghai city government started actively encouraging eligible couples to have more than one child.

“We advocate eligible couples to have two kids, because it can help reduce the proportion of the aging people and alleviate a work force shortage in the future,” Xie Lingli, director of the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission, said in a July 2009 edition of the China Daily, the country’s largest state-run English-language newspaper.

Second, China also has a looming groom problem on its hands.

Approximately 24 million Chinese men of marrying age are projected to find themselves wife-less in 2020 -- partly because the one-child policy has led to sex-selective abortion of female fetuses, according to a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the government's premier think tank.

In fact, in a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, Deputy Health Minister Liu Qian unveiled even more census figures showing an increasingly imbalanced sex ratio at birth on the Chinese mainland. The China Daily cited "the abuse of medical technology such as illegal sex-selective abortion" among the culprits.

Although Liu did not discuss a loosening of the one-child policy, one thing is clear from all this: At the very least, whispers of change are circulating among government officials on the subject of punishing "ineligible" couples who do elect to have a second child.

It is also worthwhile to note that there are several loopholes and exceptions to China's one-child rule -- first established in 1979 -- that already exist. Some rural residents can have a second child if their first is a girl, because of the ongoing stigmatization of female births. Also, if both parents are single children, they can have two kids. And ethnic minorities are allowed to have more than one child.

The New York Times on Obama’s address to Britain’s Parliament yesterday: “‘The time for our leadership is now,’ Mr. Obama proclaimed, asserting the relevance of the British-American alliance in a world of rising powers and new threats. He rejected the argument that emerging titans like China, India and Brazil ‘represent the future, and the time for our leadership has passed.’ The United States and Britain, he said, ‘remain the greatest catalysts for global action.’”

“Vice President Joe Biden yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s speech challenging the nation to put a man on the moon by lamenting that the United States has sometimes lost its will to pursue similarly big dreams,” the Boston Globe reports.

“Vice President Biden on Wednesday tore into Republicans while saying that conditions favor President Obama's reelection in 2012,” The Hill adds.

The New Hampshire Union Leader: “Calling Republicans a different breed of cat, Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday while visiting New Hampshire that President Barack Obama will be successful in his re-election bid for the White House.” More: “The 2012 election is about the future and about restoring the American dream, which is why Biden said he partnered with Obama in 2008. It is about strength in leadership, according to Biden, describing Obama as a leader with a backbone.  Americans watched as Obama executed what he called the ‘boldest undertaking of a single event in modern history,’ referring to Osama bin Laden's death.  With his future on the line, Obama didn't hesitate, said Biden. ‘And, that was the last piece of the puzzle that had to be put in place,’ added the vice president.”

Brendan Nyhan, a scholar at the University of Michigan who will be at Dartmouth after July, writes, “One of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals. Since Watergate, presidential and executive branch scandal has been an inescapable feature of the American presidency, but the current administration has not yet suffered a major scandal, which I define as a widespread elite perception of wrongdoing…  In the 1977-2008 period, the longest that a president has gone without having a scandal featured in a front-page Washington Post article is 34 months.” (Hat tip: PoliticalWire.)

New Hampshire Democrats announced this morning Vice President Joe Biden will headline a fundraising dinner in New Hampshire next week. Biden will deliver the keynote at next Wednesday's McIntyre-Shaheen 100 Club Dinner.

"We are excited to welcome Vice President Biden to this year's event," said Ray Buckley, chairman of the new Hampshire Democratic Party, in a statement. "Vice President Biden has been a champion of New Hampshire Democrats for more than three decades. Over the years, Biden has made countless trips to the Granite State to support the party and our candidates."

The vice president's trip follows President Obama's fundraising trip to Boston and his commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT, today.

Biden's trip to New Hampshire is his second to the Granite State in as many months. This is his first trip this year that will be exclusively dedicated to raising money for the 2012 contest. Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spent time at the University of New Hampshire in April to call attention to the problem of sexual assault on college campuses. During the midterm elections, Biden made frequent trips to Nashua to rally Democratic voters.

Vice President Biden called what's happening in Egypt a "pivotal moment in history."

"We have said from the beginning, that future of Egypt will be determined by Egyptian people," Biden said at an event at the University of Louisville as part of the McConnell Center's spring lecture series.

Biden added that the U.S. stands for "a set of core principles," that the "transition must be an irreversible change ... toward democracy."

He said Republicans and Democrats, "even in this contentious political climate" have largely "spoken in one voice." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is with Biden at the event.

Biden said he "had planned on speaking more," but will wait for the president to give his remarks before saying more.

President Obama is expected to speak at 1:30 pm ET.

*** UPDATE *** NBC's Athena Jones reports the president's statement is now TBD and moved to the Grand Foyer.

*** UPDATE 2 *** NBC's Savannah Guthrie reports the president's statement will be at 3:00 pm ET.