Joe Biden Facts
On November 3, 2020, Joseph Biden defeated Donald Trump in the United States presidential election and became the president-elect of the United States.
He is the 46th president elected by the people in a democratic election.
His running mate was Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first woman of color to hold the office of Vice President.
Joseph R. Biden was born on November 20, 1942. He was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania and New Castle County, Delaware.
He studied law and, in 1968, earned his law degree from the Syracuse University.
He started practicing law as a public defender and, in 1969, he was named to the Democratic Forum in Wilmington, Delaware and was involved with revitalizing the Democratic Party of Delaware.
In 1966, he married Neilia Hunter with whom he had three children – Beau, Hunter, and Amy.
Biden suffered the loss of his wife who died in a car crash with their infant daughter Amy in 1972, and later, he lost his son Beau in 2015 to brain cancer.
In 1977, Joe Biden married his second wife, Jill Jacobs with whom he has one daughter, Ashley.
In 1972, he was elected to the U.S. Senate at the age of 29.
He was reelected to the U.S. Senate six times and was an influential senator for more than 3 decades.
In 1984, as the Democratic floor manager, he passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act.
But by 2019, this Act had become very controversial and Biden began working toward modifying some of the Act’s worst laws.
Senator Biden was opposed to busing students to promote racial integration but, in 1974, he voted against banning busing and voted for a less-stringent proposal for anti-busing and anti-desegregation clauses to enforce the 5th and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
He also supported a bill that forbade the use of federal funding for busing students to schools outside their local area.
He also supported housing initiatives, job opportunities, and voting rights for all citizens of the United States, regardless of gender, color, or social status.
During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Biden met with the Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and negotiated changes to the 1979 SALT II Treaty, which were agreed to by the U.S. Senate and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev.
When President Reagan wanted to interpret the SALT Treaty differently than how it was written in order to develop his ideas of a Strategic Defense Initiative, Joe Biden advised the President to strictly adhere to the Treaty as written.
Related: US State History
In 1996, Biden voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevented the federal government from recognizing marriages between people of the same gender, and opened the doors for the states to do likewise.
He was the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and from 2007 to 2009, and acted as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that dealt with the U.S. drug policies, crime prevention, and civil liberties.
During his tenure on the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, he was instrumental in trying to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act.
In 2001, he was Chair of the International Narcotics Control Caucus.
Joseph Biden ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and in 2008. Both times, he was unsuccessful.
He resigned his seat on the Senate in 2008 when he ran as a Democrat for election with Barack Obama and became Obama’s vice president. In 2012, they both won again.
Biden was and is a superior negotiator and he negotiated with the Republicans in Congress to pass the 2010 Tax Relief Act, the Budget Control Act of 2011, and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.
He was instrumental in the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 and penned the U.S. – Russia New Start Treaty.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, he established and led the task force for Gun Violence. President Obama, in January 2017, awarded Joseph Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
