M. Spencer Green / Pool via Reuters

Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a prayer service for former Senator George McGovern at the First United Methodist Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on Thursday.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Lamenting the "beating" taken by the late Sen. George McGovern because of his vehement opposition to the Vietnam War, Vice President Joe Biden remembered the deceased 1972 Democratic nominee Thursday night as "the father of the modern Democratic Party."

Speaking at an intimate Sioux Falls prayer service for McGovern, who died Sunday at the age of 90, Biden called him "a hero" whose courage to speak against the war inspired a generation.

"Your father stood there and took all that beating," Biden told McGovern's children. "Your father was characterized by these right-wing guys as a coward, unwilling to fight. Your father was a genuine hero."

The vice president recalled McGovern's statement that he was tired of "old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in," adding in a hoarse and emotional tone, "I still feel the same way."

Slideshow: George McGovern

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The former Democratic Sen. George McGovern, who lost the 1972 presidential election to Richard Nixon and gained fame throughout his career for his devotion to fighting hunger and opposing war.

Launch slideshow

McGovern, whose 1972 rout by Richard Nixon was a low point in Democratic electoral politics, served with Biden in the Senate for eight years. His subsequent work to fight hunger won him international praise.

Biden said that, while many had asked him how he could come to the decidedly non-swing-state of South Dakota for the service when the presidential election was mere days away, that the question to him should be, "How could you not come?"

The VP's remarks were not devoid of Bidenisms. At one point, he apologized to the assembled priests for saying that his extensive years in the Senate were "a hell of an indictment." Laughter ensued as he crossed himself reverently.

And he couldn't resist tying in his recent performance in a heavily publicized debate against Paul Ryan.

"It was a great honor to serve with your dad," he told McGovern's children. "It was a great honor to know your dad. It was a great compliment when (McGovern's grandson) Matt told me his grandfather watched my debate with Paul Ryan and said "I wanna call Joe."

(An aide says that the two men did not end up speaking after the debate, as McGovern was so close to the end of his life.)

BOCA RATON, Fla. -- Courting the over-65 set in retiree-rich southern Florida Friday, Vice President Joe Biden accused the GOP presidential ticket of planning to poach the Medicare and Social Security tax benefits of the middle class to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.

"If Governor Romney’s plan goes into effect, it could mean that everyone, everyone of you, would be paying more taxes on your Social Security," Biden told hundreds of retirees at the Century Village community in Boca Raton. "The average senior would have to pay $460 a year more in taxes for their Social Security."

The Obama campaign traces that math to the claim that Romney's tax policy would necessarily require the elimination of some middle-class tax deductions. Using data from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, they determine that Romney would have to cut tax benefits for those earning under $200,000 by 58 percent. Spreading those cuts evenly across all benefits would work out to an average of $460 per year per senior.

But Team Romney counters that those numbers are based on a third party's assessment that's riddled with uncertainties and  assumptions rather than Romney's actual plan, which the campaign promises on its website "will not raise [Social Security] taxes and will not affect today's seniors or those nearing retirement."

Republicans also point out that Biden himself voted for a 1993 measure that expanded the taxable portion of Social Security benefits for many low-income seniors.

In Florida Friday, Biden said Romney's tax plan was not "moral" because of what he claims would be unfair hikes on the middle class.

"How can you justify a middle class that has been clobbered by the policies that brought on this great recession, adding taxes to them and drastically cutting taxes for the very wealthy," he told a group made up mostly of seniors in Tamarac. "It's not right, I don't even think it's moral, and beyond that it will not help the economy, it will hurt the economy."

In slamming the GOP ticket, Biden also joked that he can't determine if Romney would actually roll back the Obama-backed health care plan after Romney's on-again off-again embrace of some of its core tenets.

"He said 'well, we’re going to maybe ... do that, but I’d like to keep a lot of the good stuff,' and then his campaign says, 'no no no, he didn’t mean that,' " Biden said.

The vice president, who also won laughs from the elderly crowds for jokes about his age and a Lawrence Welk shout-out that would have sailed over the heads of a younger audience, was warmly received at his campaign events. But he did face persistent questioning on the Obama administration's health care plan when he stopped at Nestor's, a Jewish deli in Boca Raton.

Steve Grossman, a 39-year-old who said he worked in the financial services industry, approached Biden as he sat down to order a tuna salad platter and began asking about health insurance costs. The vice president initially seemed reluctant to answer, cutting Grossman off to order his food and to chat with another patron's husband on the phone, but he ended up offering a description of state-based health care exchanges more fitting for a think tank roundtable than a deli specializing in "the mother of all Pastrami sandwiches."

"You can get more benefits for less money," he told Grossman in between slurps of chicken soup. "You get to choose among those insurance companies that are competing as part of the exchanges."

MILFORD, OH – Citing Mitt Romney's appearance on NBC's Meet the Press earlier in the day, Vice President Joe Biden took aim Sunday at Romney's failure to name specific tax loopholes he would close to lower taxes and balance the budget.

"He said that he's gonna pay for all these tax cuts by closing the loopholes, but when asked by Mr. Gregory what loopholes he'd close, he couldn't name one," Biden told a crowd of 700 supporters at a western Ohio high school. 

"All this has a giant price tag and it's not going to come from closing loopholes for millionaires," he added. 

On NBC, host David Gregory asked Romney to specify how he would eliminate tax deductions and exceptions in order to compensate for the enormous financial consequences of his deep tax cut proposals. 

Romney responded only by noting that "people at the high end" would have fewer opportunities for tax exemptions, but he declined to pinpoint any specific numbers or policies. 

“High income taxpayers are going to have fewer deductions and exemptions... Those numbers are going to come down. Otherwise, they'd get a tax break. And I want to make sure people understand, despite what the Democrats said at their convention. I am not reducing taxes on high income taxpayers. I'm bringing down the rate of taxation, but also bringing down deductions and exemptions at the high end so the revenues stay the same, the taxes people pay stay the same. Middle income people are going to get a break. But at the high end, the tax coming in stays the same. But we encourage small business, because small business is able to keep more of what it makes and therefore hire more people, which is my priority.”

The stop in Clermont County, a heavily-Republican area that supported John McCain by a 2-1 margin in 2008, was Biden's final campaign event of a two-day swing through Ohio. He will return to the Buckeye State next Wednesday to campaign in Dayton.

ZANESVILLE, OH -- The meta-fact check war rages on.

As the campaigns continued to trade salvos over the accuracy of claims made in both parties' convention speeches, Vice President Joe Biden said on Saturday that he's happy to be under the microscope of fact checkers.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

Vice President Joe Biden talks with Lisa McIntosh of Lewisburg, Ohio, as he stops for an ice cream cone Saturday at a Dairy Queen in Nelsonville, Ohio.

"I say to the press, 'Fact check me,'" the vice president declared before launching into a lengthy critique of the Republican plan for Medicare overhaul.

"What they're proposing will actually cost the Medicare trust fund that pays for the benefits when you go to the hospital, the doctor, to run out of money, a sufficient amount of money by 2016," he said. "That's when it would hit the wall."

Biden's claim echoes one made Wednesday night by former President Bill Clinton, who said that the Romney-Ryan goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act would eliminate that bill's measures to keep Medicare solvent until 2024, pushing the date when Medicare will "go broke" up by 8 years.

The non-partisan factcheck.org found that to be an exaggeration; while repeal of ACA would mean the earlier exhaustion of the part of Medicare that covers hospitals, the fund would still collect payroll taxes to cover the vast majority of hospital bills.

The Washington Post put it more bluntly: "This is wrong," it wrote on Sept. 6 of Biden's 2016 Medicare solvency claim.

On Saturday, Biden also accused Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryanof proposing to turn the federal health insurance program for seniors into "Vouchercare," saying that the Romney-Ryan plan would raise costs for seniors.

Independent fact checkers have pointed out that while Ryan's most recent budget would provide private insurance vouchers which would grow at the rate of inflation rather than at the rate of health costs, it would also keep traditional Medicare as an option for seniors who wanted it. While most agree that it's likely that seniors would have to pay more if they chose Medicare, it's hard to project how health care costs would change under a hypothetical Romney-Ryan plan.

"Today, Vice President Biden said that he should be fact-checked, and we agree," said Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. "The vice president knowingly and deliberately leveled false and discredited attacks."

The fact check challenge comes after a Romney pollster was quoted saying that "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers." Paul Ryan's convention speech was heavily criticized for citing several discredited claims.

Biden poked fun at that sentiment Saturday, calling it "amazing" that the Romney campaign "doesn't like to be fact checked."

Addressing the crowd of about 450 at an Ohio elementary school, Biden also needled Republicans for their impassioned support for Medicare.

"If … you got dropped down from Mars and turned on the convention, you'd think that they really cared about it. You'd think it's something they thought of," Biden said of Republicans.

“They mention it so often you'd be surprised to learn that they've always been trying to chip away [from it] for the last 40 years," he added.

Another fact check? You can't survive on Mars.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Just a typical day in Bidenland: The Green Bay Packers, historic trains, and slamming Paul Ryan on Bowles-Simpson.

Appearing in GOP vice presidential nominee Ryan's home state Sunday afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden rattled off his knowledge of the hometown team's greats while admiring the artifacts at the National Railroad Museum, where about a thousand supporters came to hear him. 

"Whoever set this up hit a soft spot in my heart," the famously frequent Amtrak rider said, standing with a Pullman car as a backdrop. "I’m the biggest railroad guy you’ve ever known." 

Carolyn Kaster / AP

Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at the National Railroad Museum on Sunday in Green Bay, Wis.

Noting his Catholic schooling under a Packers-loving order of priests, Biden joked with the crowd heavily dotted with green and yellow team apparel, "In our school, it was the Father and the Son and Vince Lombardi."

But the meat of Biden's campaign speech Sunday also offered a new attack on Ryan's claims that President Barack Obama ignored the recommendations of a bipartisan commission he created to address the nation's staggering deficit in 2010. 

"What he didn’t tell you is he sat on that commission," Biden said. "He and his House Republican friends that he leads – had they voted with the commission, it would have been voted on but he voted no.  He would not let it go to the floor. He walked away!" 

"Romney has repeatedly said that he would reject any deal to bring down the debt that included 10 dollars in spending cuts even if it add only one dollar in taxes for the wealthy," he added. "Congressman Ryan failed to mention any of that – a convenient omission, I’d say."

Ryan served on the Bowles-Simpson commission and voted with six of the body's 18 members -- including both Republicans and Democrats – against its final recommendations. The commission's rules required 11 'yes' votes to advance for a full congressional vote. While Ryan praised many facets of the Bowles-Simpson proposal, he argued at the time that it did not do enough to address rising health costs. 

The Obama administration did not publicly embrace Simpson-Bowles either, fearing backlash both from Democrats and Republicans – who Democrats feared would reflexively oppose a plan Obama backed. 

Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck responded to Biden's claim by pointing out the Wisconsin congressman's continuing efforts to propose a responsible budget after the Bowles-Simpson panel fell apart. 

"After the commission, Paul Ryan turned around and passed two budgets that put us on the path to balance," Buck said. "The President's proposal, meanwhile, was so un-serious that it received zero votes – from either party – in Congress.”

KENNER, La -- It was a substance-free, 12-minute prime-time performance that remains unlikely to sway a single vote, but Clint Eastwood's cameo appearance and conversation with an empty chair representing President Barack Obama in Thursday night's final hour of the Republican convention coverage remained a prime topic on the campaign trail Friday.

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Actor Clint Eastwood speaks to an empty chair Thursday during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum.

Mitt Romney's top strategist told reporters on the candidate's campaign plane Friday that the moment should be judged as a performance, and that while not everyone may have liked it, Eastwood's very presence -- and concern for out-of-work Americans in particular -- made the rambling remarks by the 82-year old Academy Award winner worthwhile.

"The fact that he’s there shows he’s speaking his mind and if somebody wants to say I would have liked this different performance or that difference performance, have it," Romney campaign strategist Stuart Stevens told reporters, comparing the remarks to two famous Eastwood films. "Some people didn’t like 'Dirty Harry,' some people didn’t like 'Gran Torino,' that’s OK."

And while Ann Romney and several of Romney's top advisers remained stone-faced during Eastwood's appearance, Stevens said Mitt Romney very much enjoyed it.

"I was backstage with him and he was laughing," Stevens said."[Romney] thought it was funny."

A Romney adviser confirmed the remarks were ad-libbed, and the use of an empty chair as a prop was not discussed by the campaign. If there was any panic during the remarks, the adviser said, it might have come from the control room, where convention planners watched Eastwood continue for more than double his allotted time.

"He did what actors do sometimes, he did a little improv. If someone wants to say this wasn’t Clint Eastwood’s greatest performance, have at it. It doesn’t matter, you know," the adviser said. "It’s I think people saw that Clint Eastwood was not only endorsing Romney but endorsing the need for change. I liked that."

Meanwhile in Virginia, Romney running mate Paul Ryan faced a question by a reporter from NBC’s Hampton Roads affiliate WAVY if Eastwood's remarks were a distraction.

"I think Clint Eastwood was just being Clint Eastwood,” Ryan said in the interview to air Saturday. “One of the most profound things Clint said was that 23 million people out of work struggling to find jobs is just unacceptable."

Vice President Joe Biden, who was the butt of several of Eastwood's sharpest jokes, didn't mention the 'Dirty Harry' actor's performance during campaign stops in Ohio Friday.

But, according to pool reports, a supporter did allude to Eastwood's chair act, insisting to Biden during an impromptu stop at an Ohio fairgrounds that "You gotta keep the chair."

Biden didn't directly acknowledge the "chair" comment but gave the woman, Bev Kalmer of Poland, Ohio, a kiss on the lips.

Ann Romney, who spoke in prime time on the first full night of the convention, told CBS that Eastwood is "a unique guy and he did a unique thing" during his RNC appearance.

Asked if she was surprised by the unusual speech, she laughed and said merely "I didn't know it was coming."

Related: Clint Eastwood's 'invisible guest' RNC appearance is a hit online

WYTHEVILLE, Va. – Vice President Joe Biden sought Tuesday evening to clarify language he used earlier in the day, saying his charge that the Republican ticket's banking policies would "put you all back in chains" was merely a reference to the GOP's own rhetoric about the "unshackling" of economic forces.

Biden made the comment, which sparked immediate controversy, in the southern Virginia town of Danville Tuesday morning.

Biden tells audience GOP, banks would put them ‘back in chains’

Noting that both Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential pick, and John Boehner, speaker of the House, have both proposed “unshackling” the American economy, Biden said those were the type of proposals that led to the financial crisis. 

"The last time these guys unshackled the economy, to use their term, they put the middle class in shackles," Biden told his audience in Wytheville, Va.  "That’s how we got where we are."

Later conceding that he used the more charged verb "unchain" rather than "unshackle" in his earlier remarks – particularly because his audience in Danville, Va. included hundreds of African Americans --  Biden still took aim at Romney aides who called his statement "outrageous."

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement earlier today that Biden's reference to GOP financial policies that would put Americans "in chains" was one that "reached a new low."

But Biden said in Wytheville that the metaphor belonged to the Ryan-Romney faction of the GOP itself. 

"I’m using their own words!" Biden protested.

"I got a message for them," he added. "If you want to know want to know what’s outrageous, it’s their policies, and the effects of their policies on middle class America. That’s what’s outrageous."