TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - Vice President Joe Biden says the verdict is in on the auto bailout: President Barack Obama is right, and the Republicans trying to take his job away were "dead wrong."

In his first major foray of the 2012 campaign, Biden told a union audience in Ohio on Tuesday that the auto industry rescue saved more than a million jobs - and prevented a new Depression.

Biden spoke at a United Auto Workers hall in Toledo two days after President Barack Obama was in the politically crucial state. Obama took British Prime Minister David Cameron to a college basketball game.

Biden said the willingness of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to let Detroit go belly-up shows the bankruptcy of their economic theories. The vice president declared, "If you give any 1 of these guys the keys to the White House, they will bankrupt the middle class again."

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