“We’re not going to let the middle class carry the whole burden. We will sacrifice. But they must be in on the deal,” Biden said in a speech at the Ohio Democratic Party’s annual dinner.

Biden led efforts on a deficit-reduction plan but Republicans pulled out of the discussions last week, prompting President Barack Obama to take control of the talks.

The sides disagree over taxes. Democrats say a deficit-reduction agreement must include tax increases or eliminate tax breaks for big companies and wealthy individuals. Republicans want huge cuts in government spending and insist on no tax increases.

On tax breaks for the wealthy, Biden used the example of hedge fund managers who “play with other people’s money.”

“And they get taxed,” Biden said. “I’m not saying they don’t do good things, they do some good things. But they get taxed at 15 percent because they call it capital gains. Because they’re investing not their money, (but) other people’s money.”

To ask senior citizens receiving Medicare to pay more in taxes when people earning more than $1 million a year receive a substantial tax cut “borders on immoral,” the vice president said.

“We’re never going to get this done, we’re never going to solve our debt problem if we ask only those who are struggling in this economy to bear the burden and let the most fortunate among us off the hook,” Biden said.

Republican leaders say without a deal cutting long-term deficits, they will not vote to increase the nation’s borrowing — which will exceed its $14.3 trillion limit on Aug. 2. The Obama administration has warned that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, it would lead to the first U.S. financial default in history and roil financial markets around the globe.

Obama and Biden are scheduled to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Monday. McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, say no agreement can include tax increases.

Biden assailed moves by GOP governors in Wisconsin and Ohio to strip away collective bargaining rights from most public workers while criticizing efforts by Republicans in Congress to alter the Medicare program. He defended Obama’s handling of the economy, pointing to difficult decisions on an economic stimulus package and the rescue of U.S. automakers.

Ahead of Biden’s visit, Republicans countered that Obama’s policies led to GOP gains in 2010 and have failed to revitalize the economy.

“All the visits in the world from President Obama, Vice President Biden and other top-level surrogates won’t change the administration’s job-killing policies,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Ryan Tronovitch.

Biden, who spoke frequently of his blue-collar roots in Scranton, Pa., during the 2008 presidential race, is expected to be a frequent visitor to the Midwest during next year’s campaign.

Obama won states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2008. But those states elected Republican governors in 2010 and are considered prime targets for Republicans next year.

Looking ahead to 2012, Biden called Ohio “the state that we must win and will win.”

Ken Thomas can be reached at http://twitter.com/AP–Ken–Thomas

The ongoing analysis of bin Laden’s notes and other belongings is providing a steady stream of news about al-Qaida’s attack plans and priorities — like this Biden tidbit — but it’s also offering us a personal image of bin Laden that gets more anecdotal by the day. First we learned that he enjoyed watching himself on television. Subsequently it was revealed that he dyed his beard to stave off the effects of age. Then we discovered his “natural viagra.” (What could be next? A secret pornography trove?)

Today, based on his writings, U.S. counterterror officials announced that he was also “a micro-manager.” ProPublica reports:

Bin Laden … criticized an online propaganda magazine edited by a young American in Yemen, saying the bloodthirsty tone of an article could harm al-Qaida’s image among Muslims, according to the U.S. counterterror official.

The magazine, called Inspire, “apparently discussed using a tractor or farm vehicle in an attack outfitted with blades or swords as a fearsome killing machine,” the official said. “Bin Laden said this is something he did not endorse. He seems taken aback. He complains that this tactical proposal promotes indiscriminate slaughter. He says he rejects this and it is not something that reflects what al-Qaida does.”

Indiscriminate slaughter not something that reflects what al-Qaida does? Sounds like bin Laden was also a bit of a hypocrite.

Despite those stark comments, there’s no evidence that President Obama has fundamentally changed the workings of the NRC — which has for years been criticized as too close to industry. Earlier this year, for example, three states sued the NRC after it extended from 30 to 60 years the amount of time that nuclear waste can be stored on-site at power plants.

This is no academic issue. A new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found 14 “near misses” at U.S. power plants last year, some of them due to oversight failures. Meanwhile, at least one former top NRC official is now working for the nuclear power industry and appearing on television on behalf of the pro-nuclear lobby.

To understand how the NRC came to be so cozy with the industry it is supposed to regulate and what the crisis in Japan means for the agency’s future, I spoke with Robert Duffy, a professor of political science at Colorado State University and author of the 1997 book, “Nuclear Politics in America.” The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you give a brief history of the origins of the NRC?

Back in the early 1970s, the Atomic Energy Commission [the predecessor of the NRC] was coming under attack for being overly cozy with the nuclear industry. The fundamental problem with the AEC was that its statutory mandate said it was supposed to promote, develop and regulate nuclear power. It’s hard to do all three simultaneously. What inevitably happened was that they were promoting and developing at the expense of regulating. 

The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, which was a uniquely powerful congressional committee, was pushing the AEC to show results. And results meant reactors. So the promotional aspects and the developmental aspects always took priority over the regulatory aspects. By the early 1970s, that was becoming problematic.

Were there specific incidents that people were upset about?

People within the AEC on the scientific end of the body were raising questions about the pace of nuclear development and specifically some safety questions. They felt that the political appointees weren’t paying sufficient attention to that — pushing it under the carpet. Eventually some of these disagreements became public. There were stories in the New York Times, there were exposes on “60 Minutes,” the evening news and so on. That created a problem. The second thing that happened right around the same time was the first Arab oil embargo, in 1973. All of a sudden energy got thrust into the nation’s spotlight for the first time. What the government ended up doing was splitting the AEC into two. They took the promotional and developmental side of the AEC and that soon became the Department of Energy, and then the regulatory arm became the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

What was the mission of the NRC?

It was to regulate the nuclear power industry and ensure its safety. Now, the problem was that they basically slapped a new name on the building and gave the agency new stationery, but they didn’t change anything else. So you took all of the same people who for decades had been promoting, developing and regulating nuclear power, and didn’t even change the building, and said “now your job is to regulate.” You didn’t change the mindset. Their first official action as the NRC was to adopt all of the AEC’s regulation procedures.

So you have this agency created in 1975. Carter becomes president in 1977. Carter is much more skeptical of nuclear power then Ford or Nixon were, and he starts with some appointees who were a little more skeptical of nuclear power. Then you have Three Mile Island in 1979. Shortly after that Reagan becomes president, and Reagan is very pro-nuclear. So the agency had this brief window between 1975 and 1980 when it could have fundamentally transformed itself into an aggressive regulator, but it didn’t. Then Reagan came to power and reversed course and appointed people who were pro-nuclear and wanted to get off the industry’s back.

How much public anger was there after Three Mile Island?

There was public anger, but what often gets forgotten is that the industry had already gone into the toilet because of cost overruns. That’s the issue that has continued to hinder a nuclear revival. People started saying, “Those things are just too damn expensive and nobody in their right mind would put their own money at risk to build one.” That preceded Three Mile Island. Three Mile Island just put the nail in the coffin for the next 20 years in public opinion.

Because of those Reagan appointments to the NRC, did oversight become less stringent for many years?

No utilities placed any orders for new reactors after 1978. So what the NRC was really dealing with during the 1980s was licensing and building those plants that had already broken ground. The Reagan NRC saw their job as facilitating the licensing and construction of those plants. There were fights over the Shoreham, Long Island, plant and the Seabrook, N.H., plant. They had massive demonstrations and massive arrests; people engaged in civil disobedience because they thought these plants were unsafe and that they couldn’t be safely evacuated in case of an accident.

Are there examples from the ’80s or ’90s of problems in oversight, or safety issues?

A classic example of this centered on the question of how big evacuation zones should be. That became the focal point of the fights over the plants in Shoreham and Seabrook. The initial NRC rule required that local and state officials from all jurisdictions within a 10-mile evacuation zone participate in evacuation planning and response. Some of them refused. The Seabrook plant was located just over the border from Massachusetts, and Michael Dukakis, who was governor of Massachusetts at the time, didn’t want the plant. So he refused to participate. According to the NRC rules, if Massachusetts refused to participate, the plant couldn’t be licensed. So they changed the rule to allow the utility to step in and fulfill the role of state and local government in emergency planning. In other words, “Fine, we can’t get them to meet the rule on the books, we’ll just change the rule.”

In the 20 some years after Reagan, have things changed fundamentally?

No. In more recent years, the big fight has been over extending the license for reactors. Initially they were good for 40 years, and a lot of the plants we have in the United States now are at or very close to their 40-year term. What the utilities want is to extend the life of the reactor another 20 years. The NRC has gone along with the industry and just said, “Go right ahead.” A lot of these plants were built in the mid-1960s for 40 years. So there are questions about the effects of irradiating metal for long periods of time. There were concerns that the reactor vessels become brittle over time and other issues that critics say the NRC has not paid sufficient attention to.

What about Obama’s comments about the agency being “captive” and “moribund” in 2007?

I think his point was that the NRC, like a lot of other agencies under the Bush administration, had seen its job as protecting the industry instead of protecting the public. You had people who were overly friendly to the people they were regulating. You had the people who were looking for their next job. It was demoralizing for staffers who actually did believe in what they were doing. But the NRC has never really been a strong, independent regulatory agency. That’s because nobody except for the Union of Concerned Scientists and some other groups want it to be. Presidents and Congress have the regulatory agency they want.

What are your thoughts about the NRC and the politics of nuclear power post-Japan?

I think the NRC will be forced to say they’re going to do a comprehensive review of all U.S. facilities to see what they can learn from what happened in Japan, and think that that’s smart. My guess is that the politics of it will change a little, but not in a fundamental way. You’ll have Republicans continue to be full-throated supporters of nuclear power. You’ll have probably some greater skepticism on the part of Democrats now.

“The Iraqi people for the first time, I suspect, I would argue, in their history are on the verge of literally creating a country that will be democratic, sustainable and, God willing, prosperous,” Biden told the troops at the military’s headquarters on the outskirts of Baghdad. “It could have a dramatic impact on this entire region, and God knows the Iraqi people deserve it.”

The White House has promised to end the war responsibly. “By that we meant we were going to end this by bringing you all home within a time certain, but leaving behind a country that was worthy of all the sacrifices that so many of your brothers and sisters have made,” Biden told the troops.

More than 4,400 U.S. troops have died since the 2003 invasion and an estimated 32,000 have been wounded.

Biden’s trip marks the first visit by a top U.S. official since Iraq approved a new Cabinet last month, breaking a political deadlock and jump-starting its stalled government after March’s inconclusive elections. But lingering security challenges remain: On Thursday, three bombings in the capital killed two people.

The address to U.S. troops capped a daylong series of meetings in Baghdad, including a session with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Biden then traveled to Irbil in northern Iraq to meet with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani.

Under a security agreement between Washington and Baghdad that was hammered out in 2008, all American troops are to leave Iraq by the end of the year. However, Iraq’s top military commander, Gen. Babaker Shawkat Zebari, has said U.S. troops should stay until Iraq’s security forces can defend its borders — which he said could take until 2020.

An aide to Biden said the vice president reiterated Washington’s longtime position that the Americans would listen to any request by the Iraqi government for troops to stay longer but that Baghdad has not yet asked them to do so. The official did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Al-Maliki, under pressure from hardline Shiite Muslims, has signaled he wants American troops to leave on schedule. Last weekend, the influential and anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr returned to Iraq after nearly four years of exile in Iran, in part to insist that the U.S. “occupiers” must leave on time or face retribution among his followers “by all the means of resistance.”

A spokesman for al-Maliki, Ali al-Dabbagh, said both sides during the meeting between his boss and Biden “committed themselves to the date of withdrawal” and emphasized that the departure date of U.S. troops is fixed.

Iraq must walk a careful line, balancing its relationship with the United States and its Shiite-majority neighbor, Iran, to the east. Iran views a continued U.S. military presence along its western border with suspicion and is believed to be lobbying its Iraqi allies to adhere to the timeline.

Both Washington and Baghdad had refused to discuss publicly any possibility of U.S. troops staying until after Iraq installed its new government. Biden congratulated Iraq on accomplishing that political feat, which took months of negotiations.

“I’m here to help the Iraqis celebrate the progress they’ve made. They’ve formed a government and that’s a good thing,” Biden told reporters before meeting with U.S. ambassador James F. Jeffrey and U.S. commander Gen. Lloyd Austin at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

About 47,000 U.S. forces remain in Iraq, and American military leaders have said privately they will need to start planning by early spring on how to get them home unless told otherwise.

Keeping troops in Iraq presents political headaches both for President Barack Obama, who is up for re-election next year and promised to end the war in his 2008 campaign, and for al-Maliki, who held onto a second term as prime minister only with al-Sadr’s support.

The visit is Biden’s seventh since January 2009. He arrived in Iraq after stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the U.S. has refocused its efforts against al-Qaida and allied extremist groups that threaten American security.

Biden was last in Baghdad in September for a military ceremony at the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq.