Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is an American politician and the president-elect of the United States. Biden defeated incumbent president Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and will be inaugurated as the 46th president on January 20, 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden served as the 47th vice president during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017. He represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009. Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and eventually its chairman.
He opposed the Gulf War in 1991 and supported expanding the NATO alliance into Eastern Europe and its intervention in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. He supported the resolution authorizing the Iraq War in 2002, and later opposed the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. He also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, dealing with drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties issues; led the effort to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act; and oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and again in 2008. Biden was reelected to the Senate six times, and was the fourth-most senior senator when he resigned to serve as Barack Obama’s vice president after they won the 2008 presidential election; Obama and Biden were reelected in 2012. As vice president, Biden oversaw infrastructure spending in 2009 to counteract the Great Recession. Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, he led the Gun Violence Task Force.
His negotiations with congressional Republicans helped pass legislation including the 2010 Tax Relief Act, which resolved a taxation deadlock; the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resolved a debt ceiling crisis; and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which addressed the impending “fiscal cliff”. He also led efforts to pass the United States–Russia New START treaty and helped formulate U.S. policy toward Iraq through the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. In January 2017, Obama awarded Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction.
Some of the best quotes from Joe Biden are listed below.
- “Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.” – Joe Biden
- “Corruption is just another form of tyranny.” – Joe Biden
- “Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.” – Joe Biden
- “Fighting corruption is not just good governance. It’s self-defense. It’s patriotism.” – Joe Biden
- “For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.” – Joe Biden
- “I can die a happy man never having been president of the United States of America. But it doesn’t mean I won’t run.” – Joe Biden
- “I know I’m not supposed to like muscle cars, but I like muscle cars.” – Joe Biden
- “In the good old days when I was a senator, I was my own man.” – Joe Biden
- “In this world, emotion has become suspect – the accepted style is smooth, antiseptic and passionless.” – Joe Biden
- “Income inequity has to be addressed.” – Joe Biden
- “Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.” – Joe Biden
- “My dad always said, ‘Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.’” – Joe Biden
- “My father used to have an expression. He’d say, ‘Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in your community.’” – Joe Biden
- “No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.” – Joe Biden
- “One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.” – Joe Biden
- “Social Security’s not the hard one to solve. Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you’ve got to put all of it on the table.” – Joe Biden
- “The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can’t breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution.” – Joe Biden
- “The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.” – Joe Biden
- “The only thing I know is I ain’t changing my brand. I know what I believe. I’m confident in what I know. And I’m gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don’t like it, I understand.” – Joe Biden
- “Unions did in fact build the middle class. And here’s what that did. That built the United States of America as we know it.” – Joe Biden
- “We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don’t forget it.” – Joe Biden
- “We didn’t crumble after 9/11. We didn’t falter after the Boston Marathon. But we’re America. Americans will never, ever stand down. We endure. We overcome. We own the finish line.” – Joe Biden
- “We’re going to be OK because of the American people. They have more grit, determination and courage than you can imagine.” – Joe Biden
- “When my first semester grades came out, my mom and dad told me I wouldn’t be playing football.” – Joe Biden
- “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’” – Joe Biden
- “You’re looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.” – Joe Biden
