Biden explains Occupy Wall Street movement

As Occupy D.C. protestors held their first rally at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. today, Vice President Joe Biden told an audience at an event nearby that he understood the Occupy Wall Street movement’s motivations.

“What is the core of that protest, and why is it increasing in terms of the people it’s attracting? The core is that the bargain has been breached with the American people,” Biden said at The Atlantic/Aspen Institute’s Washington Ideas Forum, according to the Los Angeles Times. “The core is that the American people do not think the system is fair or on the level.”

"In the minds of the vast majority of the American (people), the middle class has been screwed," Biden added, according to CBS News.

Biden also explained why banks were a target of the protestors’ anger. "The American people know… the reason the CEO of the Bank of America" is still in business is because "the guy making $50,000 bucks bailed him out,” he said, according to CBS News.

Bank of America is "incredibly tone deaf at a minimum,” he added. “At a maximum, they are not, they are not, paying their fair share of the bargain here. And middle class people are getting killed.”

Biden declined to say outright whether he and President Obama supported the protests.

Meanwhile, the Occupy D.C. protestors set up camp in the nation’s capital, the Washington Post reports.

According to the Post:

After a lengthy rally and concert in Freedom Plaza, scores of protesters paraded past the U.S. Treasury and the White House, chanting, “We got sold out” and dinging cowbells and drums.

They ended up massing along H Street in Northwest in front of the heavy carved door of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, chanting “We want jobs! We want jobs!” They then unfurled a sign in front of the police guarding the entrance that said “Chamber of Corporate Horrors” and left a symbolic sheaf of job applications and resumes behind.