America’s 46th President Joseph Robinette Biden prominently known as Joe Biden is the most voted president till date and has even beaten erstwhile US President Barack Obama in the record. He won with bagging 284 electoral votes and defeated Republic Donald Trump.
Biden has a long political career which includes an 8-year-long service as the Vice President of America.
Let’s take a look at his contribution as the Vice President:
Biden was a six-time senator and holds the title of the sixth-youngest senator in American history. When he resigned in 2008 to take oath as vice-president under Obama’s administration, he was the fourth most senior senator in the history of America.
The 77-year-old has served as the vice-president of the USA for two consecutive times. He was elected in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017. Biden did many recognizable works in his service as vice president. He worked to improve the economic wellness of the middle-class people of America. Under his vice presidency, Biden took some crucial decisions for America’s foreign relations strategy and visited the leaders of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
Biden was there with Obama, and the national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room to monitor the progress of the May 2011 mission to kill Osama Bin Laden. Although, he had opposed going forward with the mission.
Biden’s 1st term as Vice President: On January 20, 2009, Biden took oath as the 47th Vice President of the United States. According to Obama, Biden was like a Basketball player “who does a bunch of things that don’t show up in the stat sheet”. Biden’s service started with a defeat that he faced while having a debate with Hilary Clinton who was then Secretary of State, about sending 21,000 new troops to Afghanistan. Biden lost that debate but his strategy of Iraq was reconsidered by Obama and soon he became the administration’s point man for Iraq.
It can be called a coincidence that Biden’s strategy started with sending new troops to Iraq but his oversight of U.S. policy in Iraq receded with the exit of U.S. troops in 2011.
Biden played an important role in America’s recovery from the great recession. President Obama administration introduced ‘The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA)’ which was a stimulus package for the economy. Biden was in charge of overseeing the infrastructure spending of this package. Biden played his role so well and insured less than one percent of corruption in the distribution of the package.
In March 2011, Biden negotiated with Congress over resolving federal spending levels for the rest of the year and avoiding a government shutdown. In three months, Biden successfully created a ‘Biden panel’ with six congressional members to work for the bipartisan deal on raising the US debt ceiling as part of an overall deficit reduction plan. His efforts were successful and resulted in the formation of the Budget Control Act of 2011, signed on August 2, 2011.
Biden’s 2nd term as Vice-President: On January 20, 2013, Biden was re-elected as the Vice President of the United States. Biden failed to play a major role in discussions of the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014. The reason was his role was cut by the Senate leaders feeling he had given too much away during previous discussions. However, those discussions led to the October 2013 passage of the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014, which resolved the federal government shutdown of 2013 and the debt-ceiling crisis of 2013
In 2013, the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act took place. The Act deployed the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. While Biden was a key for the Obama administration for foreign relations with Iraq he favoured arming Syria’s rebel fighters after Iraq fell apart during 2014.
In August 2016, Biden expressed his condolences after the bombing campaign during the Kosovo war. He met the Serbian president and attended a ceremony renaming a highway after his son deceased Beau, who died battling brain tumour.
In April 2019, Biden announced his candidacy for the 2020 US Presidential Election and in June 2020, he reached the delegate threshold required to secure the Democratic nomination. On August 11, he announced US Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate for the office of the Vice President.
