Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. ( BY-dən; born November 20, 1942) is an American politician serving as the 46th and current president of the United States....
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. ( BY-dən; born November 20, 1942) is an American politician serving as the 46th and current president of the United States. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice president from 2009 to 2017 under Barack Obama and represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009.
Raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Castle County, Delaware, Biden studied at the University of Delaware before earning his law degree from Syracuse University in 1968. He was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and became the sixth-youngest senator in American history when he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972, at the age of 29. Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and eventually became its chairman. 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, including the contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. 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. 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, making him the first president to have received the accolade prior to taking office.
In April 2019, Biden announced his candidacy in the 2020 presidential election, his third presidential campaign. Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee in April 2020 and reached the delegate threshold needed to secure the nomination in June 2020. In August, he announced his choice of U.S. senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Biden and Harris won the general election with 306 electoral votes to Donald Trump's 232. Biden is the oldest sitting president, the first from Delaware, and the second Catholic (the first was John F. Kennedy).
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Barney Frank
Barnett Frank (born March 31, 1940) is an American former politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts fr...
Barnett Frank (born March 31, 1940) is an American former politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts from 1981 to 2013. A Democrat, Frank served as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2007–2011) and was a leading co-sponsor of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act, a sweeping reform of the U.S. financial industry. Frank, a resident of Newton, Massachusetts, was considered the most prominent gay politician in the United States during his time in Congress.Born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey, Frank graduated from Bayonne High School, Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He worked as a political aide before winning election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1972. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 with 52 percent of the vote. He was re-elected every term thereafter by wide margins. In 1987, he publicly came out as gay, becoming the first member of Congress to do so voluntarily. From 2003 until his retirement, Frank was the leading Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, and he served as committee chairman when his party held a House majority from 2007 to 2011. In July 2012, he married his long-time partner, James Ready, becoming the first member of Congress to marry someone of the same sex while in office. Frank did not seek re-election in 2012, and retired from Congress at the end of his term in January 2013. A biography of Frank was published in 2015.
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