Joe Biden by Beatrice Gormley (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

During the 2008 campaign, Biden had called George W. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history.” He meant that Cheney had taken too big and too independent a role in the Bush administration. Cheney had urged the president into aggressive military actions, ignored Congress, and brushed aside human rights concerns.

Joe Biden knew how to play on a team, and he surprised many people by putting his own ego aside to work with the new president. Just as when Coach Walsh at Archmere had chosen Mike Fay, instead of Joe, to be football captain, Biden accepted his position in second place. There was a lot to be done, and it could only be done with teamwork.

Between the election in November 2008 and the inauguration in January 2009, Obama had consulted with Biden about choosing his cabinet. One of the most important posts was secretary of state, and Barack and Joe agreed that he should ask Hillary Clinton. Obama agreed, in fact, with most of Biden’s recommendations for members of the cabinet. “Not because I made them,” Biden explained on ABC News, “but because we think a lot alike.” The two men shared certain values, and they were also both practical thinkers.

The most urgent task for the new president and his team was to rescue the US economy from the Great Recession. In February 2009, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, a bill for $787 billion to stimulate the national economy. Obama gave Biden the responsibility of overseeing the handout of the money to states and cities, to infrastructure projects such as repairing bridges, and for direct assistance to individuals. Biden’s special focus was to look after the middle class, which was not as well off as it used to be.

Also urgent was the war in Iraq. There were still 150,000 US troops in Iraq, and the war had already cost US taxpayers over $600 billion. President Obama had campaigned on the idea that the Iraq War, launched by President George W. Bush in 2003, was a “dumb war.”

As the Obama administration got underway in 2009, the president asked Joe Biden to oversee his policy of withdrawing US troops from Iraq. Vice President Biden flew to Iraq in July 2009 to help with this transition, by meeting with Iraqi leaders and urging cooperation among the hostile factions in Iraq. On that same trip, Joe Biden also had a chance to hug Delaware National Guard captain Beau Biden, stationed in Iraq.

High on Obama and Biden’s to-do list was a national health plan. Joe Biden had believed in the need for a national health care program since he first ran for senator in 1972. President Bill Clinton had attempted to reform US health care during his first term, but in 1994 the proposed plan had died in Congress.

National Health Care

In 2009, almost all industrialized countries of the world had a national health insurance plan that guaranteed a basic level of care for the whole population. But the US had a patchwork system in which some Americans received health insurance through their employers and some bought private insurance. Some were covered by government programs such as Medicare, for those over sixty-five, or Medicaid, a state-run program for low-income people.

However, more than forty million Americans had no health insurance at all. Many of them had to decide between buying lifesaving medications, such as insulin for diabetes, and paying the rent. In 2013, the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine showed that US citizens had a shorter life expectancy than people in most other wealthy nations, in spite of the fact that the US spent more on health care than any other nation in the world.

For years there had been efforts in the US, including the Clinton administration’s failed plan, to set up a national health insurance system for all Americans. The main problem in achieving health care for everyone was that politicians disagreed about how much control the federal government should have. Some wanted the government to run the program, as it did Medicare. Others felt that private insurance companies could offer better services. And pharmaceutical companies fought any attempts to control the high prices of medications.

Joe Biden had good relations with many members of Congress. He felt hopeful that Congress could work out a health care reform bill fairly quickly. At first it seemed that the House of Representatives and the Senate would cooperate to craft a bill that Democrats and Republicans alike could agree on.

In August 2009 the fight for health care reform lost a great champion. Joe Biden’s mentor and longtime friend Ted Kennedy died of brain cancer. Speaking at the memorial service at the Kennedy Library in Boston, Biden told how Kennedy had helped him through his first hard year in the Senate after Neilia’s death, and how Kennedy had visited him in Wilmington in 1988 when Biden was recovering from brain surgery. Throughout Kennedy’s Senate career, he had fought for universal health care in the United States.

By 2010, Republican resistance to Barack Obama’s presidency had grown. But through compromises and pushing and pulling, Congress managed to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”). Joe Biden could feel rightly proud of his part in the effort. This was the first major health care reform since the beginning of Medicare in 1966.

On March 23, 2010, Joe Biden went with Barack Obama to the East Room of the White House, where President Obama would finally sign the ACA into law. Biden was so excited that he forgot he was standing next to a live microphone. “Mr. President,” he said to Obama, “this is a big [expletive] deal.”

One more of Joe Biden’s gaffes. But in this case, perhaps, a forgivable one.

Appointing new justices to the Supreme Court was also an important concern of the Obama administration. In May 2009, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace retiring justice David