128 Facts About President Biden

1.

President Biden was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and moved with his family to Delaware in 1953 when he was ten years old.

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2.

President Biden studied at the University of Delaware before earning his law degree from Syracuse University.

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3.

President Biden was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and became the sixth-youngest senator in U S history after he was elected to the United States Senate from Delaware in 1972, at age 29.

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4.

President Biden was the chair or ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 12 years.

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5.

President Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995; 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.

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6.

President Biden was the fourth-most senior sitting senator when he became Obama's vice president after they won the 2008 presidential election.

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7.

President Biden oversaw infrastructure spending in 2009 to counteract the Great Recession.

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8.

President Biden proposed the American Jobs Plan, aspects of which were incorporated into the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

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9.

President Biden proposed the American Families Plan, which was merged with other aspects of the American Jobs Plan into the proposed Build Back Better Act.

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10.

President Biden completed the withdrawal of U S troops from Afghanistan, during which the Afghan government collapsed and the Taliban seized control.

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11.

President Biden responded to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Russia and authorizing foreign aid and weapons shipments to Ukraine.

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12.

President Biden's paternal line has been traced to stonemason William President Biden, who was born in 1789 in Westbourne, England, and emigrated to Maryland in the United States by 1820.

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13.

At Archmere Academy in Claymont, President Biden played baseball and was a standout halfback and wide receiver on the high school football team.

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14.

At the University of Delaware in Newark, President Biden briefly played freshman football and, as an unexceptional student, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965 with a double major in history and political science and a minor in English.

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15.

President Biden has a stutter, which has improved since his early twenties.

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16.

President Biden says he reduced it by reciting poetry before a mirror, but some observers suggested it affected his performance in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential debates.

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17.

In 1968, President Biden earned a Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law, ranked 76th in his class of 85, after failing a course due to an acknowledged "mistake" when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school.

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18.

President Biden had not openly supported or opposed the Vietnam War until he ran for Senate and opposed Nixon's conduct of the war.

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19.

In 1968, based on a physical examination, he was given a conditional medical deferment; in 2008, a spokesperson for President Biden said his having had "asthma as a teenager" was the reason for the deferment.

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20.

In 1968, President Biden clerked at a Wilmington law firm headed by prominent local Republican William Prickett and, he later said, "thought of myself as a Republican".

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21.

President Biden disliked incumbent Democratic Delaware governor Charles L Terry's conservative racial politics and supported a more liberal Republican, Russell W Peterson, who defeated Terry in 1968.

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22.

In 1969, President Biden practiced law, first as a public defender and then at a firm headed by a locally active Democrat who named him to the Democratic Forum, a group trying to reform and revitalize the state party; President Biden subsequently reregistered as a Democrat.

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23.

In 1970, President Biden ran for the 4th district seat on the New Castle County Council on a liberal platform that included support for public housing in the suburbs.

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24.

In 1972, Biden defeated Republican incumbent J Caleb Boggs to become the junior U S senator from Delaware.

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25.

President Biden was the only Democrat willing to challenge Boggs, and with minimal campaign funds, he was given no chance of winning.

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26.

President Biden received help from the AFL–CIO and Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell.

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27.

President Biden's platform focused on the environment, withdrawal from Vietnam, civil rights, mass transit, equitable taxation, health care, and public dissatisfaction with "politics as usual".

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28.

President Biden considered resigning to care for them, but Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield persuaded him not to.

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29.

Years later, President Biden said he believed the truck driver had been drinking before the crash, but was never charged, and the driver's family said the deaths haunted him until he died in 1999.

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30.

President Biden wrote that he "felt God had played a horrible trick" on him, and he had trouble focusing on work.

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31.

President Biden met the teacher Jill Tracy Jacobs in 1975 on a blind date.

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32.

Beau President Biden became an Army Judge Advocate in Iraq and later Delaware Attorney General before dying of brain cancer in 2015.

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33.

President Biden sometimes flew back from overseas to teach the class.

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34.

President Biden received considerable attention when he excoriated Secretary of State George Shultz at a Senate hearing for the Reagan administration's support of South Africa despite its continued policy of apartheid.

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35.

President Biden became ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1981.

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36.

President Biden's supporters praised him for modifying some of the law's worst provisions, and it was his most important legislative accomplishment to that time.

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37.

In 1994, President Biden helped pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, known as the President Biden Crime Law, which included a ban on assault weapons, and the Violence Against Women Act, which he has called his most significant legislation.

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38.

In 1993, President Biden voted for a provision that deemed homosexuality incompatible with military life, thereby banning gays from serving in the armed forces.

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39.

President Biden was junior senator to William Roth, who was first elected in 1970, until Roth was defeated in 2000.

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40.

In May 1974, President Biden voted to table a proposal containing anti-busing and anti-desegregation clauses but later voted for a modified version containing a qualification that it was not intended to weaken the judiciary's power to enforce the 5th Amendment and 14th Amendment.

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41.

President Biden supported a measure forbidding the use of federal funds for transporting students beyond the school closest to them.

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42.

In February 1988, after several episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, President Biden was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for surgery to correct a leaking intracranial berry aneurysm.

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43.

President Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

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44.

President Biden chaired it from 1987 to 1995 and was a ranking minority member from 1981 to 1987 and again from 1995 to 1997.

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45.

President Biden had known of some of these charges, but initially shared them only with the committee because Hill was then unwilling to testify.

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46.

The committee hearing was reopened and Hill testified, but President Biden did not permit testimony from other witnesses, such as a woman who had made similar charges and experts on harassment, saying he wanted to preserve Thomas's privacy and the hearings' decency.

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47.

Liberal legal advocates and women's groups felt strongly that President Biden had mishandled the hearings and not done enough to support Hill.

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48.

President Biden later sought out women to serve on the Judiciary Committee and emphasized women's issues in the committee's legislative agenda.

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49.

President Biden voted to acquit during the impeachment of President Clinton.

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50.

President Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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51.

President Biden became its ranking minority member in 1997 and chaired it from June 2001 to 2003 and 2007 to 2009.

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52.

President Biden collaborated effectively with Republicans and sometimes went against elements of his own party.

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53.

President Biden became interested in the Yugoslav Wars after hearing about Serbian abuses during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991.

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54.

Once the Bosnian War broke out, President Biden was among the first to call for the "lift and strike" policy of lifting the arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims and supporting them with NATO air strikes, and investigating war crimes.

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55.

President Biden wrote an amendment in 1992 to compel the Bush administration to arm the Bosnian Muslims, but deferred in 1994 to a somewhat softer stance the Clinton administration preferred, before signing on the following year to a stronger measure sponsored by Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman.

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56.

President Biden has called his role in affecting Balkans policy in the mid-1990s his "proudest moment in public life" related to foreign policy.

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57.

President Biden eventually became a critic of the war and viewed his vote and role as a "mistake", but did not push for withdrawal.

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58.

President Biden supported the appropriations for the occupation, but argued that the war should be internationalized, that more soldiers were needed, and that the Bush administration should "level with the American people" about its cost and length.

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59.

President Biden opposed the troop surge of 2007, saying General David Petraeus was "dead, flat wrong" in believing the surge could work.

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60.

President Biden instead advocated dividing Iraq into a loose federation of three ethnic states.

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61.

President Biden was considered a strong candidate because of his moderate image, his speaking ability, his high profile as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the upcoming Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination hearings, and his appeal to Baby Boomers; he would have been the second-youngest person elected president, after John F Kennedy.

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62.

President Biden raised more in the first quarter of 1987 than any other candidate.

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63.

President Biden's speech had similar lines about being the first person in his family to attend university.

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64.

President Biden responded that politicians often borrow from one another without giving credit, and that one of his rivals for the nomination, Jesse Jackson, had called him to point out that he had used the same material by Humphrey that President Biden had used.

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65.

President Biden was required to repeat the course and passed with high marks.

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66.

In mid-2007, President Biden stressed his foreign policy expertise compared to Obama's.

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67.

President Biden had difficulty raising funds, struggled to draw people to his rallies, and failed to gain traction against the high-profile candidacies of Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.

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68.

President Biden never rose above single digits in national polls of the Democratic candidates.

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69.

Shortly after Biden withdrew from the presidential race, Obama privately told him he was interested in finding an important place for Biden in his administration.

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70.

Under instructions from the campaign, President Biden kept his speeches succinct and tried to avoid offhand remarks, such as one he made about Obama's being tested by a foreign power soon after taking office, which had attracted negative attention.

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71.

Relations between the two campaigns became strained for a month, until President Biden apologized on a call to Obama and the two built a stronger partnership.

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72.

President Biden chaired Obama's transition team and headed an initiative to improve middle-class economic well-being.

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73.

President Biden visited Iraq about every two months, becoming the administration's point man in delivering messages to Iraqi leadership about expected progress there.

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74.

President Biden oversaw infrastructure spending from the Obama stimulus package intended to help counteract the ongoing recession.

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75.

President Biden campaigned heavily for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, maintaining an attitude of optimism in the face of predictions of large-scale losses for the party.

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76.

President Biden led the successful administration effort to gain Senate approval for the New START treaty.

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77.

President Biden then took the lead in trying to sell the agreement to a reluctant Democratic caucus in Congress.

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78.

Some reports suggest that Biden opposed proceeding with the May 2011 U S mission to kill Osama bin Laden, lest failure adversely affect Obama's reelection prospects.

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79.

President Biden took the lead in notifying Congressional leaders of the successful outcome.

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80.

In October 2010, Biden said Obama had asked him to remain as his running mate for the 2012 presidential election, but with Obama's popularity on the decline, White House Chief of Staff William M Daley conducted some secret polling and focus group research in late 2011 on the idea of replacing Biden on the ticket with Hillary Clinton.

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81.

President Biden made his statement without administration consent, and Obama and his aides were quite irked, since Obama had planned to shift position several months later, in the build-up to the party convention.

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82.

President Biden apologized to Obama in private for having spoken out, while Obama acknowledged publicly it had been done from the heart.

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83.

President Biden played little part in discussions that 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.

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84.

In January 2016, Biden affirmed that it was the right decision, but admitted to regretting not running for president "every day".

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85.

President Biden continued to lead efforts to find treatments for cancer.

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86.

President Biden remained in the public eye, endorsing candidates while continuing to comment on politics, climate change, and the presidency of Donald Trump.

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87.

President Biden continued to speak out in favor of LGBT rights, continuing advocacy on an issue he had become more closely associated with during his vice presidency.

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88.

President Biden was accused of withholding $1billion in aid from Ukraine in this effort.

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89.

In 2015, President Biden pressured the Ukrainian parliament to remove Shokin because the United States, the European Union and other international organizations considered Shokin corrupt and ineffective, and in particular because Shokin was not assertively investigating Burisma.

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90.

In March 2019 and April 2019, President Biden was accused by eight women of previous instances of inappropriate physical contact, such as embracing, touching or kissing.

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91.

President Biden had previously described himself as a "tactile politician" and admitted this behavior has caused trouble for him.

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92.

President Biden won 18 of the next 26 contests, including Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, putting him in the lead overall.

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93.

President Biden's transition was delayed by several weeks as the White House ordered federal agencies not to cooperate.

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94.

President Biden is the second Catholic president and the first president whose home state is Delaware.

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95.

On March 11, the first anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, President Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, a $1.

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96.

President Biden's decision met with a wide range of reactions, from support and relief to trepidation at the possible collapse of the Afghan government without American support.

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97.

In May 2021, during a flareup in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, President Biden expressed his support for Israel, saying "my party still supports Israel".

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98.

President Biden attended a G7 summit, a NATO summit, and an EU summit, and held one-on-one talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

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99.

In July 2021, amid a slowing of the COVID-19 vaccination rate in the country and the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant, President Biden said that the country has "a pandemic for those who haven't gotten the vaccination" and that it was therefore "gigantically important" for Americans to be vaccinated.

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100.

In September 2021, President Biden announced AUKUS, a security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, to ensure "peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term"; the deal included nuclear-powered submarines built for Australia's use.

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101.

President Biden entered office nine months into a recovery from the COVID-19 recession and his first year in office was characterized by robust growth in real GDP, employment, wages and stock market returns, amid significantly elevated inflation.

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102.

President Biden faced bipartisan criticism for the manner of the withdrawal, with the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies described as chaotic and botched.

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103.

President Biden defended his decision to withdraw, saying that Americans should not be "dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves".

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104.

President Biden convened an online Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change to press other countries to strengthen their climate policy.

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105.

President Biden pledged to double climate funding to developing countries by 2024.

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106.

President Biden began the year by endorsing a change to the Senate filibuster to allow for the passing of the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Act, on both of which the Senate had failed to invoke cloture.

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107.

President Biden sought to strengthen ties with Australia and New Zealand in the wake of the deal, as Anthony Albanese succeeded to the premiership of Australia and Jacinda Ardern's government took a firmer line on Chinese influence.

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108.

Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin, resulting from continuing negotiations on President Biden's initial Build Back Better agenda, which Manchin had blocked the previous year.

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109.

President Biden supported the fiscal stimulus in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009; the Obama administration's proposed increase in infrastructure spending; subsidies for mass transit, including Amtrak, bus, and subway; and the reduced military spending in the Obama administration's fiscal year 2014 budget.

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110.

President Biden has proposed partially reversing the corporate tax cuts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, saying that doing so would not hurt businesses' ability to hire.

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111.

President Biden voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

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112.

President Biden is a staunch supporter of the Affordable Care Act .

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113.

President Biden has promoted a plan to expand and build upon it, paid for by revenue gained from reversing some Trump administration tax cuts.

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114.

President Biden opposes drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and supports governmental funding to find new energy sources.

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115.

President Biden wants to achieve a carbon-free power sector in the U S by 2035 and stop emissions completely by 2050.

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116.

President Biden's program includes reentering the Paris Agreement, nature conservation, and green building.

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117.

President Biden has called China the "most serious competitor" that poses challenges to the United States' "prosperity, security, and democratic values".

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118.

President Biden has voiced concerns about China's "coercive and unfair" economic practices and human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region to the Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

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119.

President Biden pledged to sanction and commercially restrict Chinese government officials and entities who carry out repression.

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120.

President Biden has said he is against regime change, but for providing non-military support to opposition movements.

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121.

President Biden opposed direct U S intervention in Libya, voted against U S participation in the Gulf War, voted in favor of the Iraq War, and supports a two-state solution in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

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122.

President Biden supports extending the New START arms control treaty with Russia to limit the number of nuclear weapons deployed by both sides.

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123.

In 2021, Biden recognized the Armenian genocide, becoming the first U S president to do so.

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124.

President Biden was consistently ranked one of the least wealthy members of the Senate, which he attributed to his having been elected young.

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125.

President Biden comes from a long line of working people in Scranton—auto salesmen, car dealers, people who know how to make a sale.

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126.

In recent years, especially after the 2015 death of his elder son Beau, President Biden has been noted for his empathetic nature and ability to communicate about grief.

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127.

President Biden's exaggerations include being an active civil rights activist who was repeatedly arrested during protests.

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128.

President Biden has claimed to have been an excellent student who earned three different degrees.

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