Politics - Joe Biden

I have never really researched politicians and the issues for which they stand... until now. I hope to investigate all of the presidential hopefuls, both Democratic and Republican, in the order in which they are listed on msnbc.com. And I am beginning with Joe Biden.

Senator Biden was born in 1942, making him about 65 years old. He looks lively enough. He seems to care about family. He is a Democrat. The issues addressed on his website are Iraq; Afghanistan and Darfur; Energy; Jobs; Health Care; Access to Higher Education; Preparing for College; Homeland Security; Crime; and Climate Change.

With regard to Iraq, Senator Biden believes that Iraq should be federalized. By this he means that the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds should be bound together in matters of common Iraqi interest, such as border security and the distribution of oil revenues. But the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis should be given "breathing room" in their own regions. It sounds as though he wants to create some kind of sub-states within the country in which each group is free to govern itself for the most part. He wants to continue financial support and leave enough troops behind to keep the different groups "honest" with each other, and he wants the financial support to be tied to expectations such as fairness toward minority groups.

Senator Biden wants to increase our troop levels in Afghanistan and Darfur to help squelch the increase in genocide, Taliban, Al Qaeda, warlords and drug traffickers. He wants international agreement and cooperation in putting things to right in this rapidly deteriorating region.

With regard to energy, Senator Biden sees it as key to our foreign and economic policies. So long as we are dependent on either hostile or unstable nations for our energy, we will be funding activists with whom we disagree and weakened in our own ability to produce goods. His goal is to increase fuel efficiency and the use of live fuels/renewable energy, and also to invest heavily in research that would help us to do even better in energy production and efficiency.

Senator Biden hopes to spur job growth through both energy security (described above) and health reform, which is currently costing our greatest companies as much as they make in profits (or will be by 2008, according to his website, joebiden.com).

What he wants to do with health care is to contain its growing costs and provide health care access to the 47 million Americans who do not have health insurance. To contain the costs, he wants to modernize the system, simplify the system, and reduce errors. To provide access to uninsured Americans, he wants to expand insurance for children, relieve families and businesses of the expenses of catastrophic cases, and use data from states that have been pursuing innovative possibilities to help the nation determine the best course of action.

As to education, Senator Biden is eager to help all Americans have access to higher education in colleges. He wants to increase tax deductions for tuition payments, expand Pell grants to cover the average tuition costs of public colleges for low-income students, and provide public service jobs designed to help high school students begin working toward and saving for school. He also wants to invest in making the school years prior to college more profitable for students.

Senator Biden believes homeland security needs aggressive restructuring, and to do that, needs significant finances. To get those finances, he wants to "take back" one year's worth of tax cuts for people who make $1 million or more per year, then put those funds in a trust fund to provide the necessary finances.

In dealing with crime, Biden's main goal is to restore the $2 billion worth of funding that has been cut from state and local law enforcement.

In dealing with climate control, Senator Biden wants the United States to take significant steps toward being the world leader in resolving global warming. He also wants us to seek a treaty with developing nations, after setting an example for them, that will encourage them to downgrade their emissions, too.

Senator Biden's website does not mention his views on such issues as abortion and stem cells, but I was able to find some of his thoughts at http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Joe_Biden.htm. He is against publicly funding it, supports the partial-birth abortion ban but not undoing Roe, believes that life begins at conception, there is a constitutional right to privacy, voted to expand research to more stem-cell lines, voted not to notify parents of MINORS who got out of state abortions, voted to reduce teen pregnancy by educations and CONTRACEPTIVES, thought it was not a crime to harm a fetus while conducting other crimes, said there should be no ban on military base abortions, voted to ban partial birth abortions, and voted against banning human cloning.

It looks to me as though Senator Biden's website has some good thoughts to consider, including his thoughts on Iraq (though I hope he would be wise enough to establish a good system for evaluating when it is actually safe for Iraq for the USA to withdraw troops-his desire to send troops to Afghanistan indicates that he is willing to send troops where they are needed). However, the issues that are most clearly moral are not readily addressed, and I wish they were. After researching his views on abortion and stem cells, he makes me nervous. Some good thoughts, and I will have to think more about his various opinions after comparing them to what other politicians think.