United States Senate career of Joe Biden

Joe Biden is an American politician representing the Democratic Party. Born in Pennsylvania, Biden studied law in Delaware and had his first government appointment on the New Castle (Delaware) County Council. In 1972, he won election to the Senate, a post he held until 2009 when he took office as vice president to President Barack Obama. Following the completion of Obama’s second term in 2017, Biden considered his future options before deciding to pursue the presidency himself. After a hard-contested election cycle in 2020 against incumbent Republican President Donald Trump, Biden emerged victorious and won the presidency. As of January 2021, Biden was preparing to transition into the White House with his vice president, Kamala Harris.

The United States Senate career of Joe Biden—lasting thirty-six years and thirteen days—was among the longest in American history. During this time, Biden participated in hundreds of votes and served on many committees, becoming well-known for his political and personal stances and areas of emphasis. Serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees, Biden focused on legislation relating to law enforcement, victim’s rights, and international issues. He became well known for his work in writing and promoting the Crime Act of 1994, particularly the Violence Against Women Act, and his dealing with tensions in the Balkans, Darfur, and Iraq.

Background

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on November 20, 1942. In 1953, his family moved to Claymont, Delaware, where he grew up. Biden attended the University of Delaware before proceeding to Syracuse Law School in New York. As a young man, he served on the County Council for New Castle, Delaware. This experience opened his interests to the world of politics, and he began working on a congressional campaign. In 1972, at the age of twenty-nine, Biden was elected to his first term in the Senate as a Democrat representing Delaware.

Shortly after this accomplishment, Biden experienced a serious personal blow when his wife and infant daughter were killed in an automobile accident that also badly injured his two sons. Although he questioned his ability to serve his term as planned, Biden ultimately chose to go ahead. He was inaugurated into the Senate while at the hospital with his sons, and traveled to work each day by train. In 1977, he remarried Jill Jacobs, a teacher and educator. Together, they raised Biden’s two sons, Beau (a former Attorney General and National Guard member who passed away in 2015 from brain cancer), and Hunter (an attorney). Joe and Jill Biden also had a daughter, Ashley (a social worker and activist).

Biden continued his career in the Senate longer than most of his contemporaries. He left in 2009 to take office as the forty-seventh vice president of the United States under President Barack Obama. During this term, and after the pair’s re-election in 2012, Biden was an active and highly visible figure in the government. He pursued many foreign affairs initiatives and traveled to more than fifty countries, logging more than one million miles of work-related travel. He helped to lead Obama’s Cabinet and coordinated executive policies with Congress and various governmental agencies. During his time as Vice President, Biden promoted healthcare issues, firearms restrictions, reduced violence against women, and standards for the middle class.

Throughout his long career in government, Biden had sought the presidency for himself several times, including short, unsuccessful runs in 1988 and 2008. In 2020, with Democrats scrambling to unseat Republican Donald Trump, Biden re-entered the race. Over the campaign, he became the Democratic forerunner, and, following a heated and contested election, was declared the winner.

Overview

Many of the defining events in Biden’s political career occurred during his long Senate tenure, which lasted for thirty-six years and thirteen days. In 1972, Biden was elected to his first term in the Senate. Taking office on January 3, 1973, he launched a senatorial career that would last until January 15, 2009, and make him the eighteenth longest-serving senator in American history as of January 2021. During this time, he had an impact on many critical domestic and international decisions.

One of Biden’s main contributions during his tenure was serving as chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee for seventeen years. A ranking member is the longest-tenured member on a Senate committee from the minority party. During this time, Biden focused on several issues related to the American justice system. In 1994, Biden helped to write and promote the Crime Act. The Crime Act was intended to improve law and order to American cities by increasing law enforcement and toughening penalties for offenders. Among the major tenets of the bill were stricter prison sentences for federal cases, with encouragement for states to follow suit. The bill also provided financial assistance for hiring more than 100,000 additional police officers, building new prisons, and conducting more drug-related arrests in the hopes of curbing illegal drug use. Although Congress passed the legislation and President Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1994, the Crime Act proved controversial. Critics charged it with relying too heavily on incarceration as the remedy for social problems, and cited that most of the people who were ultimately jailed due to the act were from minority groups.

Despite the controversy around the Crime Act, one of its sections, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), proved more popular. The VAWA altered the rules for dealing with domestic abuse cases, particularly those against women. Prior to this act, police officers were usually discouraged from getting involved in domestic disputes, and the legal system had little recourse against abusers who fled across state lines. The VAWA reversed both of these policies and pushed for stricter protections for victims and penalties for abusers. The law proved highly successful and many analysts credit it for helping to increase the visibility of this form of violence and reduce the rate of violence between domestic partners by 64 percent between 1993 and 2010. Biden has commented that he is prouder of this legislation than of any of his other accomplishments in the Senate.

The other major focus of Biden’s senatorial work was in foreign relations. He served for twelve years as the chairman or ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a critical time in international policy. His work helped to guide American responses to issues such as post-Cold War tensions, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction. Biden focused attention on the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s and the Darfur region of Sudan in the 2000s. He was also a major voice in the effort to end fighting in and restore social and governmental stability to war-torn Iraq. Biden has also worked extensively with the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism where he has debated ways to end terrorism and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

During his time in the Senate, Biden helped to write or determine the fates of hundreds of pieces of legislation. Some of Biden’s work involved helping victims of tragedy, such as providing travel waivers for people whose loved ones were killed in military actions. He also helped gain financial assistance for survivors of the September 11 terrorist attacks and bereaved families of those killed. Other Biden-supported acts covered a wide range of topics, including protecting the American flag from being burned, honoring Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus, working against steroid abuse in sports, and defining and condemning acts of genocide.

Biden became a well-known figure in the Senate. This attention ultimately contributed to his later role as vice president in Obama’s White House. When Biden first took office at 29 years of age, he was one of the youngest senators in US history, and was frequently mistaken for a staffer. Even Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once mistook him for a young aide rather than a senator. Biden also recalled rather humble accommodations in his early years, including an office so small that it could hardly hold visitors. Through his many years in the Senate, and despite his participation in government during an increasingly divisive political period, Biden maintained a mostly positive view. He has written that, even during tough political contests when outsiders could only see bitter partisan divisions, the members of the Senate generally maintained a sense of fair play and a desire for cooperation.

Bibliography

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