Just the beginning.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden is criticizing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for favoring economic policies that Biden says would help some people succeed while leaving the majority of Americans behind.

Biden made the claims in an op-ed published in Friday’s editions of The Des Moines Register. Biden singled out Romney in the state where the first votes will be cast in the GOP competition in less than two weeks.

Biden said that Romney’s proposals for the economy “would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class.”

“Romney also misleadingly suggests that the president and I are creating an ‘Entitlement Society,’ whereby government provides everything for its people without regard to merit, as opposed to what he calls an “Opportunity Society,” where everything is merit-based and every man is left to fend for himself,” Biden wrote.