Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accused Republicans of hypocrisy on “court packing” but said he is not a fan of Democratic calls to expand the Supreme Court, Fox News reports.
"The court packing is going on now," Biden told an Ohio news outlet on Monday. "Never before, when the election has already begun and millions of votes already cast, has it ever been that a Supreme Court nominee was put forward, has never happened before. ... I've already spoken on, I'm not a fan of court packing, but I don't want to get off on that whole issue."
"I want to keep focused," he said. "The president will love nothing better than to fight about whether or not I would in fact pack the court or not pack the court, etc. The focus is why is he doing what he's doing now. Why now, with less than 24 days to go in the election, and the hearings going to take place are only going to be 10 days or whatever it is before the vote takes place?"
"That's the court packing the public should be focused on," he added.
Biden repeatedly dodged:
Biden has come under fire for dodging questions about whether he would support expanding the Supreme Court.
Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris refused to say whether she and Biden would support the effort at her debate with Vice President Mike Pence last week.
Biden said during the primaries that he "would not get into court-packing.”
"We had three justices. Next time around, we lose control, they add three justices. We begin to lose any credibility the court has at all,” he said.
Biden wants to focus on health care:
Democrats have largely focused Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing on the question of Obamacare and Biden reiterated his focus on the Republican effort to strike down the law, which would cost tens of millions of Americans their health coverage.
"What's going on now is just an all, outright effort to do away with health care. ... They’re going to go into court in 28 days, in the Supreme Court, and going to try to get rid of the Affordable Care Act," Biden said Monday. "That's 100 million people's preexisting conditions are going to be wiped out. They're not going to be able to get insurance, and you got 20 million people who are going to lose their insurance right away."
