Joe Biden 47th Vice President of the United States Incumbent Assumed office January 20, 2009 President Barack Obama Preceded by Dick Cheney Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations In office January 4, 2007 – January 3, 2009 Preceded by Richard Lugar Succeeded by John Kerry In office June 6, 2001 – January 3, 2003 Preceded by Jesse Helms Succeeded by Richard Lugar In office January 3, 2001 – January 20, 2001 Preceded by Jesse Helms Succeeded by Jesse Helms Chairman of the International Narcotics Control Caucus In office January 4, 2007 – January 3, 2009 Preceded by Chuck Grassley Succeeded by Dianne Feinstein Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary In office January 6, 1987 – January 3, 1995 Preceded by Strom Thurmond Succeeded by Orrin Hatch United States Senator from Delaware In office January 3, 1973 – January 15, 2009 Preceded by Caleb Boggs Succeeded by Ted Kaufman Personal details Born Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (1942-11-20) November 20, 1942 (age 69) Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States Political party Democratic Spouse(s) Neilia Hunter (1966–1972) Jill Jacobs (1977–present) Children Joseph R. III (b.1969) R. Hunter (b.1970) Naomi C. (1971–1972) Ashley B. (b.1981) Residence Number One Observatory Circle (Official) Wilmington, Delaware (Private) Alma mater University of Delaware (BA) Syracuse University (JD) Profession Lawyer Religion Roman Catholicism Signature Website Vice President Joe Biden Joe Biden (Facebook) @Joe Biden (Twitter)

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Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. (pronunciation: /ˈdʒoʊsɨf rɒbɨˈnɛt ˈbaɪdən/; born November 20, 1942) is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama. A Democrat, he was a United States Senator from Delaware from January 3, 1973 until his resignation on January 15, 2009, following his election to the Vice Presidency.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and lived there for ten years before moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969, and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was re-elected to the Senate six times, was the fourth most senior senator at the time of his resignation, and is the 15th-longest serving Senator in history. Biden was a long-time member and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His strong advocacy helped bring about U.S. military assistance and intervention during the Bosnian War. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991. He voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, but later proposed resolutions to alter U.S. strategy there. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, and led creation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and Violence Against Women Act. He chaired the Judiciary Committee during the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Biden unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008, both times dropping out early in the race. Barack Obama selected Biden to be the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Biden is the first Roman Catholic and the first Delawarean to become Vice President of the United States. As Vice President, Biden has been heavily involved in Obama's decision-making process and held the oversight role for infrastructure spending from the Obama stimulus package aimed at counteracting the late-2000s recession. His ability to negotiate with Congressional Republicans played a key role in bringing about the bipartisan deals that resulted in the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 that resolved a taxation deadlock and the Budget Control Act of 2011 that resolved the United States debt ceiling crisis.

Early life and education[link]

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania,^[1] the son of Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr. (1915–2002)^[2] and Catherine Eugenia "Jean" (née Finnegan; 1917–2010).^[3] He was the first of four siblings^[1] in a Catholic family. His mother was of Irish descent, with roots in County Londonderry.^[4][5][6] His paternal grandparents, Mary Elizabeth (Robinette) and Joseph H. Biden, an oil businessman from Baltimore, had English, Irish, and French ancestry.^[7] He has two brothers, James Brian Biden and Francis W. Biden, and a sister, Valerie (Biden) Owens.^[8] His maternal great-grandfather, Edward F. Blewitt, was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate.^[9]

Biden's father had been very well-off earlier in his life, but had suffered several business reverses by the time Biden was born,^[10] and for several years the family had to live with Biden's maternal grandparents, the Finnegans.^[10] When the Scranton area went into economic decline during the 1950s, Biden's father could not find enough work.^[11] In 1953, the Biden family moved to an apartment in Claymont, Delaware, where they lived for a few years before moving to a house in Wilmington, Delaware.^[10] Joe Biden Sr. then did better as a used car salesman, and the family's circumstances were middle class.^[10][11][12]

Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont,^[13] where he was a standout halfback/wide receiver on the high school football team; he helped lead a perennially losing team to an undefeated season in his senior year.^[10][14] He played on the baseball team as well.^[10] During these years, he participated in an anti-segregation sit-in at a Wilmington theatre.^[15] Academically, Biden was undistinguished,^[10] but he was a natural leader among the students.^[16] He graduated in 1961.^[13]

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, where he was more interested in sports and socializing than in studying,^[10] although his classmates were impressed by his cramming abilities.^[15] He played halfback with the Blue Hens freshman football team,^[14] but he dropped a junior year plan to play for the varsity team as a defensive back, enabling him to spend more time with his out-of-state girlfriend.^[14][17] He double majored in history and political science and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1965,^[1] ranking 506th of 688 in his class.^[18]

He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University's College of Law in 1968,^[19] where by his own description he found it to be "the biggest bore in the world" and pulled many all-nighters to get by.^[15][20] During his first year there, he was accused of having plagiarized 5 of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden said it was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and he was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record.^[20] He was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.^[19]

Biden received five student draft deferments during this period, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War.^[21] In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager.^[21][22] Biden was not a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement; he would later say that at the time he was preoccupied with marriage and law school, and that he "wore sports coats ... not tie-dyed".^[23]

Negative impressions of drinking alcohol in the Biden and Finnegan families and in the neighborhood led to Joe Biden becoming a teetotaler.^[10][24] Biden suffered from stuttering through much of his childhood and into his twenties;^[25] he overcame it via long hours spent reciting poetry in front of a mirror.^[16]

Family and early political career[link]

On August 27, 1966, Biden, then a law student, married Neilia Hunter, who was from an affluent background in Skaneateles, New York and had attended Syracuse University.^[1][10][26] They had met in 1964 while on spring break in the Bahamas, and he had overcome her parents' initial reluctance for her to be dating a Roman Catholic.^[27] They had three children, Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III (born 1969), Robert Hunter (born 1970), and Naomi Christina (born 1971).^[1]

In 1969, Biden began practicing law in Wilmington, Delaware, first as a public defender and then with his own firm, Biden and Walsh.^[15] Corporate law, however, did not appeal to him and criminal law did not pay well.^[10] He supplemented his income by managing properties.^[28] He ran as a Democrat for the New Castle County Council on a liberal platform that included support for public housing in the suburban area.^[15] He won by a solid margin in the usually Republican district,^[15] and served from 1970 to 1972^[19] while continuing his private law practice as well.^[29]

His entry into the 1972 U.S. Senate election in Delaware presented Biden with a unique circumstance. Longtime Delaware political figure and Republican incumbent Senator J. Caleb Boggs was considering retirement, which would likely have left U.S. Representative Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor Harry G. Haskell, Jr. in a divisive primary fight. To avoid that, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon helped convince Boggs to run again with full party support.^[30] No other Democrat wanted to run against Boggs.^[15] Biden's campaign had virtually no money and was given no chance of winning.^[10] It was managed by his sister Valerie Biden Owens (who would go on to manage his future campaigns as well) and staffed by other members of his family, and relied upon handed-out newsprint position papers and meeting voters face-to-face;^[31] the small size of the state and lack of a major media market made the approach feasible.^[28] Biden did receive some assistance from the AFL-CIO and Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell.^[15] Biden's campaign issues focused on withdrawal from Vietnam, the environment, civil rights, mass transit, more equitable taxation, health care, the public's dissatisfaction with politics-as-usual, and "change".^[15][31] During the summer Biden trailed by almost 30 percentage points,^[15] but his energy level, his attractive young family, and his ability to connect with voters' emotions gave the surging Biden an advantage over the ready-to-retire Boggs.^[12] Biden won the November 7, 1972 election in an upset by a margin of 3,162 votes.^[31]

On December 18, 1972, a few weeks after the election, Biden's wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware.^[1] Neilia Biden's station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer as she pulled out from an intersection; the truck driver was cleared of any wrongdoing.^[32] Biden's two sons, Beau and Hunter, were critically injured in the accident, but both eventually made full recoveries.^[1] Biden considered resigning to care for them;^[12] he was persuaded not to by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and others and was sworn into office from one of their bedsides.^[33] The accident left Biden filled with both anger and religious doubt: "I liked to [walk around seedy neighborhoods] at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight ... I had not known I was capable of such rage ... I felt God had played a horrible trick on me."^[34]

To be at home every day for his young sons,^[35] Biden began the practice of commuting every day by Amtrak train for 1½ hours each way from his home in the Wilmington suburbs to Washington, D.C., which he continued to do throughout his Senate career.^[12] In the aftermath of the accident, he had trouble focusing on work, and appeared to just go through the motions of being a senator. In his memoirs, Biden notes that staffers were taking bets on how long he would last.^[26][36] A single father for five years, Biden left standing orders that he be interrupted in the Senate at any time if his sons called.^[33] In remembrance of his wife and daughter, Biden does not work on December 18, the anniversary of the accident.^[37] Biden's elder son, Beau, later became Delaware Attorney General and an Army Judge Advocate serving in Iraq;^[38] his younger son, Hunter, became a Washington attorney and lobbyist.^[39]

In 1975, Biden met Jill Tracy Jacobs, who grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and would become a teacher in Delaware.^[40] They had met on a blind date with the help of Biden's brother, although it turned out that Biden had already noticed her in a local advertisement.^[40] Biden would credit her with renewing his interest in both politics and life.^[41] On June 17, 1977, Biden and Jacobs married.^[1] They have one daughter, Ashley Blazer (born 1981),^[1] who later became a social worker.^[39] The Bidens are Roman Catholics and regularly attend Mass at St. Joseph on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware.^[42]

United States Senator[link]

Drawer of chamber desk XCI occupied by Biden in the U.S. Senate. Note signature at upper center inside of drawer. President John F. Kennedy once occupied the desk in the U.S. Senate.^[43]

Senator Biden, Senator Frank Church and President of Egypt Anwar El Sadat after signing Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty, 1979

Biden with President Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office

When Biden took office on January 3, 1973, at age 30 (the minimum age to become a U.S. Senator), he became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history.^[44] In 1974, freshman Senator Biden was named one of the 200 Faces for the Future by Time magazine.^[45]

Biden was subsequently elected to six additional terms, in the elections of 1978, 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002, and 2008, usually getting about 60 percent of the vote.^[46] He did not face strong opposition; Governor Pierre S. du Pont, IV chose not to run against him in 1984.^[47] Biden spent 28 years as a junior senator due to the two-year seniority of his Republican colleague William V. Roth, Jr.. After Roth was defeated for re-election by Tom Carper in 2000, Biden became Delaware's senior senator. He then became the longest-serving senator in Delaware history.^[48] In May 1999, Biden set the mark for youngest senator to cast 10,000 votes.^[49]

In February 1988, after suffering from several episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, Biden was taken by long-distance ambulance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and given lifesaving surgery to correct an intracranial berry aneurysm that had begun leaking;^[50][51] the situation was serious enough that a priest had administered last rites at the hospital.^[52] While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary embolism, which represented a major complication.^[51] Another operation to repair a second aneurysm, which had caused no symptoms but was also at risk from bursting, was performed in May 1988.^[51][53] The hospitalization and recovery kept Biden from his duties in the U.S. Senate for seven months.^[37] Biden has had no recurrences or effects from the aneurysms since then.^[51]

Judiciary Committee[link]

Biden was a long-time member of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which he chaired from 1987 until 1995 and on which he served as ranking minority member from 1981 until 1987 and again from 1995 until 1997. In this capacity, he dealt with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties.

While chairman, Biden presided over the two most contentious U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings in history, those for Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991.^[12] In the Bork hearings, Biden stated his opposition to Bork soon after the nomination, reversing an approval in an interview of a hypothetical Bork nomination he had made the previous year and angering conservatives who thought he could not conduct the hearings dispassionately.^[54] At the close, Biden won praise for conducting the proceedings fairly and with good humor and courage, as his 1988 presidential campaign collapsed in the middle of the hearings.^[54][55] Rejecting some of the less intellectually honest arguments that other Bork opponents were making,^[12] Biden framed his discussion around the belief that the U.S. Constitution provides rights to liberty and privacy that extend beyond those explicitly enumerated in the text, and that Bork's strong originalism was ideologically incompatible with that view.^[55] Bork's nomination was rejected in the committee by a 9–5 vote,^[55] and then rejected in the full Senate by a 58–42 margin.

In the Thomas hearings, Biden's questions on constitutional issues were often long and convoluted, sometimes such that Thomas forgot the question being asked.^[56] Thomas later wrote that despite earlier private assurances from the senator, Biden's questions had been akin to a beanball.^[57] The nomination came out of the committee without a recommendation, with Biden opposed.^[12] In part due to his own bad experiences in 1987 with his presidential campaign, Biden was reluctant to let personal matters enter into the hearings.^[56] Biden initially shared with committee, but not the public, Anita Hill's sexual harassment charges, on the grounds she was not yet willing to testify.^[12] After she did, Biden did not permit other witnesses to testify further on her behalf, such as Angela Wright (who made a similar charge) and experts on harassment.^[58] Biden said he was striving to preserve Thomas's right to privacy and the decency of the hearings.^[56][58] The nomination was approved by a 52–48 vote in the full Senate, with Biden again opposed.^[12] During and afterwards, Biden was strongly criticized by liberal legal groups and women's groups for having mishandled the hearings and having not done enough to support Hill.^[58] Biden subsequently sought out women to serve on the Judiciary Committee and emphasized women's issues in the committee's legislative agenda.^[12]

Joe Biden at the World Economic Forum in Jordan in 2003

Biden was involved in crafting many federal crime laws. In 1984, he was Democratic floor manager for the successful passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act; civil libertarians praised him for modifying some of the Act's provisions, and it was his most important legislative accomplishment at that point in time.^[47] He later spearheaded the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, also known as the Biden Crime Law, and the landmark Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA), which contains a broad array of measures to combat domestic violence and provides billions of dollars in federal funds to address gender-based crimes. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Morrison that the section of VAWA allowing a federal civil remedy for victims of gender-motivated violence exceeded Congress's authority and therefore was unconstitutional.^[59] Congress reauthorized VAWA in 2000 and 2005.^[60] Biden has said, "I consider the Violence Against Women Act the single most significant legislation that I’ve crafted during my 35-year tenure in the Senate."^[61] In 2004 and 2005, Biden enlisted major American technology companies in diagnosing the problems of the Austin, Texas-based National Domestic Violence Hotline, and to donate equipment and expertise to it in a successful effort to improve its services.^[62][63]

Biden was critical of the actions of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during the 1990s Whitewater controversy and Lewinsky scandal investigations, and said "it's going to be a cold day in hell" before another Independent Counsel is granted the same powers.^[64] Biden voted to acquit on both charges during the impeachment of President Clinton.

As chairman of the International Narcotics Control Caucus, Biden wrote the laws that created the U.S. "Drug Czar", who oversees and coordinates national drug control policy. In April 2003, he introduced the controversial Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act, also known as the RAVE Act. He continued to work to stop the spread of "date rape drugs" such as flunitrazepam, and drugs such as Ecstasy and Ketamine. In 2004, he worked to pass a bill outlawing steroids like androstenedione, the drug used by many baseball players.^[12]

Biden's legislation to promote college aid and loan programs allows families to deduct on their annual income tax returns up to $10,000 per year in higher education expenses. His "Kids 2000" legislation established a public/private partnership to provide computer centers, teachers, Internet access, and technical training to young people, particularly to low-income and at-risk youth.^[65]

Foreign Relations Committee[link]

Biden was also a long-time member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. In 1997, he became the ranking minority member and chaired the committee in January 2001 and from June 2001 through 2003. When Democrats re-took control of the Senate following the 2006 elections, Biden again assumed the top spot on the committee in 2007.^[66] Biden was generally a liberal internationalist in foreign policy.^[67][68] He collaborated effectively with important Republican Senate figures such as Richard Lugar and Jesse Helms and sometimes went against elements of his own party.^[66][67] Biden was also co-chair of the NATO Observer Group in the Senate.^[69] A partial list covering this time showed Biden meeting with some 150 leaders from nearly 60 countries and international organizations.^[70] Biden held frequent hearings as chair of the committee, as well as holding many subcommittee hearings during the three times he chaired the Subcommittee on European Affairs.^[68]

During his first decade in the Senate, Biden focused on arms control issues.^[68][71] In response to the refusal of the U.S. Congress to ratify the SALT II Treaty signed in 1979 by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter, Biden took the initiative to meet the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, educated him about American concerns and interests, and secured several changes to address objections of the Foreign Relations Committee.^[72] When the Reagan administration wanted to interpret the 1972 SALT I Treaty loosely in order to allow the Strategic Defense Initiative to proceed, Biden argued for strict adherence to the treaty's terms.^[68] Biden clashed again with the Reagan administration in 1986 over economic sanctions against South Africa, leading to a heated exchange between the senator and Secretary of State George P. Shultz.^[71]

Biden became interested in the Yugoslav Wars after hearing about Serbian abuses during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991.^[68] Once the Bosnian War broke out, Biden was among the first to call for the "lift and strike" policy of lifting the arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims and supporting them with NATO air strikes, and investigating war crimes.^[66][68] Both the George H. W. Bush administration and Clinton administration were reluctant to implement the policy, fearing Balkan entanglement.^[67][68] In April 2003, Biden spent a week in the Balkans and held a tense three-hour meeting with Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević.^[73] Biden related that he told Milošević, "I think you're a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one."^[73] Biden wrote an amendment in 1992 to compel the Bush administration to arm the Bosnians, but deferred in 1994 to a somewhat softer stance preferred by the Clinton administration, before signing on the following year to a stronger measure sponsored by Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman.^[73] The 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina then led to the Dayton Agreement and a successful NATO peacekeeping effort.^[68] Biden has called his role in affecting Balkans policy in the mid-1990s his "proudest moment in public life" that related to foreign policy.^[67] In 1999, during the Kosovo War, Biden supported the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia and Montenegro,^[68] and co-sponsored with his friend John McCain the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, which called on President Clinton to use all necessary force, including ground troops, to confront Milosevic over Serbian actions in Kosovo.^[67][74] In 1998, Congressional Quarterly named Biden one of "Twelve Who Made a Difference" for playing a lead role in several foreign policy matters, including NATO enlargement and the successful passage of bills to streamline foreign affairs agencies and punish religious persecution overseas.^[49]

Biden gives his opening statement and questions to U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Iraq, September 11, 2007

Biden had voted against authorization for the Gulf War in 1991,^[67] siding with 45 of the 55 Democratic senators; he said the U.S. was bearing almost all the burden in the anti-Iraq coalition.^[75] Biden was a strong supporter of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, saying "Whatever it takes, we should do it."^[76] Regarding Iraq, Biden stated in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security, and that there was no option but to eliminate that threat.^[77] The Bush administration rejected an effort Biden undertook with Senator Richard Lugar to pass a resolution authorizing military action only after the exhaustion of diplomatic efforts. In October 2002, Biden voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, justifying the Iraq War.^[67] While he soon became a critic of the war and viewed his vote as a "mistake", he did not push to require a U.S. withdrawal.^[67][73] He supported the appropriations to pay for the occupation, but argued repeatedly that the war should be internationalized, that more soldiers were needed, and that the Bush administration should "level with the American people" about the cost and length of the conflict.^[66][74]

By late 2006, Biden's stance had shifted, and he opposed the troop surge of 2007,^[67][73] saying General David Petraeus was "dead, flat wrong" in believing the surge could work.^[76] Biden was instead a leading advocate for dividing Iraq into a loose federation of three ethnic states.^[78] In November 2006, Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, released a comprehensive strategy to end sectarian violence in Iraq.^[79] Rather than continuing the present approach or withdrawing, the plan called for "a third way": federalizing Iraq and giving Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis "breathing room" in their own regions.^[80] In September 2007, a non-binding resolution passed the Senate endorsing such a scheme.^[79] However, the idea was unfamiliar, had no political constituency, and failed to gain traction.^[76] Iraq’s political leadership united in denouncing the resolution as a de facto partitioning of the country, and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement distancing itself.^[79]

In March 2004, Biden secured the brief release of Libyan democracy activist and political prisoner Fathi Eljahmi, after meeting with leader Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli.^[81][82] In May 2008, Biden sharply criticized President George W. Bush for his speech to Israel's Knesset in which he suggested that some Democrats were acting in the same way some Western leaders did when they appeased Hitler in the runup to World War II. Biden stated: "This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement." Biden later apologized for using the expletive. Biden further stated, "Since when does this administration think that if you sit down, you have to eliminate the word 'no' from your vocabulary?"^[83]

Delaware matters[link]

Biden receiving a 1997 tour of a new facility at Delaware's Dover Air Force Base

Biden was a familiar figure to his Delaware constituency, by virtue of his daily train commuting from there,^[12] and generally sought to attend to state needs.^[46] Biden was a strong supporter of increased Amtrak funding and rail security;^[46] he hosted barbecues and an annual Christmas dinner for the Amtrak crews, and they would sometimes hold the last train of the night a few minutes so he could catch it.^[28][46] (He earned the nickname "Amtrak Joe" as a result, and in 2011, Amtrak's Wilmington Station was named the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Railroad Station, in honor of the over 7,000 trips he made from there.^[84][85]) He was an advocate for Delaware military installations, including Dover Air Force Base and New Castle Air National Guard Base.^[86]