security secretary on homeland security threats. c-span this week presents coverage of former secretary of state hillary clinton as he testifies before the house select committee on benghazi. live coverage begins thursday morning on washington journal. tune into c-span3 starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern for life hearing coverage plus phone calls afterwards. c-span2 will re-air the benghazi hearing in its entirety starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch coverage saturday and sunday at noon eastern on c-span. jill biden said he is not entering the 2016 presidential race. endedresident biden months of speculation he would run for president at their time, after unsuccessful bids in the 1988 and 2008 races. he did the announcement in the white house rose garden, joined by his wife jill biden and

president obama. vice president biden: that morning, please sit down. thank you for lending me the rose garden for a minute. as my family and i have worked process, i grieving have said all along what i have said time and again to others. that it may very well be that that process, by the time we get window on, closes the mounting a realistic campaign for president. that it might close. i have concluded it has closed.

experience,previous that there is no timetable for this process. the process does not respect or much care about things like filing deadlines or debates and primaries and caucuses. i could doknow that -- i could not do this if the family was not ready. the good news is, the family has reached that point. as i said many times, my family hopeuffered a loss, and i there would come a time, and i have said this to other families, that sooner rather than later, when you think of your loved one, it brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eyes. that is where the bidens are today, thank god.

beau is our inspiration. unfortunately, i think we are out of time, the time necessary to mount a winning campaign for the nomination. while i will not be a candidate, i will not be silent. i intend to speak out clearly and forcefully, to influence as much as i can where we stand as a party, and where we need to go as a nation. and this is what i believe. obamaeve that president has lead this nation from crisis to recovery, and we are now on the cusp of resurgence. i am proud to have played a part in that. will bety, our nation, making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the obama legacy. the american people have worked too hard, and we have come to far for that. democrats should not only defend this record, and protect this

record, they should run on the record. we have a lot of work to get done over the next 15 months, -- there is a lot of is a lot that the president will have to get done. we will bebe clear, building on a really solid foundation. it all starts with giving the middle class and heading chance -- a fighting chance. menow the press love to call middle-class joe, but it is about the middle class. it is not just a matter of fairness or economic growth, it is a matter of social stability for this nation. sustain the current levels of inequality that exist in this country. i believe the huge sums of unlimited and often secret

money, pouring into politics, is a fundamental threat to our democracy and i really mean that. i think it is a threat. the middle class will never have a fighting chance in this country, as long as just several hundred families, the wealthiest families, control the process. it is that simple. i believe we have to level the playing field for the american people. that is going to take access to education and opportunity to work. we need to commit. for 14 years.g we need to commit to 16 years of free public education for all children. we all know that 12 years of public education is not enough. as a nation, let's make the same commitment to a college education today that we made to a high school education 100 years ago. children and child care is the one biggest area for workings --

barrier for working families. the child care tax credit will lead to a dramatic influence in -- women for the at workforce and raise the economic standards. there are many ways to pay for this. there are many equitable ways. we can pay for all of this with one simple step. by limiting the deductions in the tax code to 28% of income. wealthy folks will end up paying a little bit more. but it is my guess, and i mean this sincerely, it is my guess is they would be happy to help build a stronger economy and better educated america. i believe we need to lead more by the power of our temple as the president has, then merely by the example of our power. we have learned very hard lessons for more than a decade of large-scale open-ended military invasions. we have to accept the fact that

we cannot solve all the world's problems. we can't solve many of them, alone. the argument that we just have to do something when bad people do bad things, is not good enough. it is not a good enough reason for american intervention, and to put our sons and daughters lives on the line, put them at risk. i believe we have to and the divisive partisan politics reaping the country apart -- ripping the country apart. i think we can. it is mean spirited and petty and has gone on for much too long. i don't believe like some do, that it is naive to talk to republicans. i don't think we should look at republicans as our enemy. they are the opposition, not the enemy. and for the sake of the country, together. work as the president said many times, compromise is not a dirty word. but look at it this way.

how does this country function without consensus? withoutwe move forward being able to arrive at consensus? four more years of this kind of battle may be more than this country can take. we have to change it. we have to change it. i believe we need a moonshot in this country to cure cancer. it is personal. but i know we can do this. the president and i have already been working hard on increasing ending for research and development, because there are so many breakthroughs just on the horizon in science and medicine. the things that are just about to happen. and we can make them real. within absolute national endmitment to and cancer -- cancer as we know it today.

i'm going to spend the next 15 months in this office pushing as hard as i can to accomplish this, because i know there are democrats and republicans on the tol who share our passion silence this deadly disease. i would be anything, have wanted to be the president that ended cancer, because it is possible. i also believe we need to keep moving forward in the arc of this nation towards justice. the rights of the lgbtq community, immigration reform, equal pay for women, rooting out institutional racism. at the core, every one of these things, everyone, is about the same thing. it is about equality. it is about fairness and respect. as my dad used to say, it is about affording every single person dignity. it is not complicated.

every single one of these issues. is about dignity. and the ugly forces of hate and division will not let up, but they do not represent the american people. they do not represent the heart of this country. they represent a small fraction of the political elite. and the next president will have to take it on. most of all, i believe there is unlimited possibilities for this country. i don't know how many of the white house staff have heard me say it repeatedly, that we are so much better positioned than any country in the world. we are -- i have been doing this for a long time. when i got elected as a 29-year-old i was called the optimist. i am more optimistic about the possibilities, the incredible possibilities to leap forward, then i have been any time in my career.

i believe to my core that there is no country on the face of the earth better positioned to lead the world in the 21st century than the united states of america. washington just has to begin to function again. instead of being the problem, it has to become dissolution -- the solution. we have to be one america again. have alwaysore, i believed that what sets america apart from every other nation is that we, ordinary americans, belief in possibilities. unlimited possibilities. a kidssibilities for growing up in a poor inner-city neighborhood, or a spanish-speaking home, or a kid from mayfield in delaware, or pennsylvania like jill and i. to be able to be anything we wanted to be, to do anything

that we want. that's what we were both taught and what the president was taught. it was real. that is what i grew up. believing. it has always been true in this country. if we lose that, we have lost something very special. we will have lost the very soul of this country. when i was growing up, my parents, in tough times, looked at me and would say to me and my brothers and sister, honey, it is going to be ok. and they meant it. they meant it. it was going to be ok. saysome of you cover me, i go back to your old neighborhoods and talk to your contemporaries. there are too many people in america today, too many parents who don't believe they can look

their kid in the eye and they certainty, isith going to be ok. that is what we need to change. it is not complicated. that will be the true measure of our success. you will not have meant it until every parent can look at their kid in tough times and say, it is going to be ok. it.mean that is our responsibility. i believe it is in our power. the nation has done before in difficult times. i have had the great fortune and privilege of being in public service most of my adult life, since i have been 25 years old. through personal triumphs and tragedies, my entire family, my s and my daughter, my wife, our whole family -- this sounds purpose inwe found

public life. we found purpose in public life. tointend, the whole family, spend the next 15 months fighting for what we have always cared about. what my family has always cared about, with every ounce of our being. working alongside the president and members of congress and our future nominee, i am absolutely certain we are fully capable of accomplishing extraordinary things. we can do this. america won't, just when the future, we will own the finish line. thank you for all being so gracious to jill and me for the last six or eight months and the whole career for that matter. i'm telling you, we can do so much more. i'm looking forward to continuing to work with this man to get it done. thank you.

thank you all very much. [applause] >> every weekend, the c-span network features programs on politics, nonfiction books, and american history. easternight but a: 30 on c-span, a townhall meeting with senator ted cruz followed in. life call saturday, bernie sanders,

martin o'malley, hillary clinton, and former governor of rhode island.sunday evening at a30, carly fiorina will hold town hall in south carolina. this saturday beginning at 11:30 on c-span2, the wisconsin book festival from medicine, featuring interviews with nonfiction authors including mary noris and her book on the english language, david on the city of detroit, and evan thomas and spoke. -- book. on at 9:00, john danforth how he thinks a sense of religion can lead the country out of the current and battered state of politics. on american history tv on c-span3, saturday evening at 6:00 eastern, cia historian clayton lori on espionage and intolerant -- intelligence gathering politics and civil war and wife you historical document exist here it sunday morning -- at 2002t 10:00,

interview on civil rights career, growing up on the segregated -- segregated south. get the complete schedule at c-span.org. >> this story breaking from the hill. the house freedom caucus stopped short of formally endorsing representative paul ryan for house speaker on wednesday. representative labrador of idaho noted that two thirds of the conservative group backs ryan for the speakership, but said the group will only endorse if 80% of members support ryan. we could not get to a consensus, labrador said. the ball is in paul ryan scored. court. -- paul ryan's this is not about crowning a king, it is about working together by making sure every