The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people through the Electoral College to a four-year term of office. The Vice President is the first person in the presidential line of succession, and would ascend to the Presidency upon the death, resignation, or removal of the President.
Under the Constitution, the Vice President is President of the United States Senate. In that capacity, he or she is allowed to vote in the Senate when necessary to break a tie. While Senate customs have created supermajority rules that have diminished this Constitutional power, the Vice President still retains the ability to influence legislation (e.g. the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005). Pursuant to the Twelfth Amendment, the Vice President presides over the joint session of Congress when it convenes to count the vote of the Electoral College.
A vice president (British English - government: vice-president; business: director) is an officer in government or business who is below a president (managing director) in rank. The name comes from the Latin vice meaning 'in place of'. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president. A common colloquial term for the office is vee-pee, deriving from a phonetic interpretation of the abbreviation VP.
In government, a vice president is a person whose primary responsibility is to replace the president on the event of his or her death, resignation or incapacity. Vice presidents are either elected jointly with the president as his or her running mate, elected separately, or appointed independently after the president's election.
Most, but not all, governments with vice presidents have only one person in this role at any time. If the president is not present, dies, resigns, or is otherwise unable to fulfill his or her duties, the vice president will generally serve as president. In many presidential systems, the vice president does not wield much day-to-day political power, but is still considered an important member of the cabinet. Several vice presidents in the Americas held the position of President of the Senate; this is the case, for example, in Argentina, the United States, and Uruguay. The vice president sometimes assumes some of the ceremonial duties of the president, such as attending functions and events that the actual president may be too busy to attend; the Vice President of the United States, for example, often attends funerals of world leaders on behalf of the President. In this capacity, the vice president may thus assume the role of a de facto symbolic head of state, a position which is lacking in a system of government where the powers of head of state and government are fused.
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.
Jill Tracy Biden (née Jacobs, previously Stevenson; born June 5, 1951) is an American educator and, as the wife of Vice President Joe Biden, is the Second Lady of the United States.
She was born in Hammonton, New Jersey and grew up in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. She married Joe Biden in 1977 and became stepmother to his two young sons from his first marriage, Beau and Hunter, whose mother and baby sister died in a car accident. Joe and Jill Biden have a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.
Jill Biden has a bachelor's degree from the University of Delaware, master's degrees from West Chester University and Villanova University and a doctoral degree from the University of Delaware. She taught English and reading in high schools for 13 years, and also taught adolescents with emotional disabilities at a psychiatric hospital. From 1993 to 2008, she was an English and writing instructor at Delaware Technical & Community College. Since 2009, she has been a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College and is thought to be the first Second Lady to hold a paying job while her husband is Vice President. She is the founder of the Biden Breast Health Initiative non-profit organization, co-founded the Book Buddies program, and is active in Delaware Boots on the Ground.