Joe Biden.(DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE)(Biography)

"This is absolutely bizarre that we continue to subsidize highways beyond the gasoline tax ... [and] we don't want to subsidize a national rail system that has environmental impact."--J. Biden

While serving in his first and only term as a member of the New Castle [Delaware] County Council, Joseph Biden ran for the U.S. Senate in 1972. The U.S. Constitution states that a person must be 30 years of age to serve as a senator. Biden won that election in a close race against an incumbent Republican senator and went on to become the fifth youngest U.S. senator in history. Though he was 29 on election day, he turned 30 prior to being sworn in to office the following January thereby qualifying constitutionally.

Currently the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has handily won reelection five times and is now serving in his 34th year in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987, he led his colleagues in the defeat of Judge Robert Bork for a place on the U.S. Supreme Court, a rejection based on the respected jurist's professed intention to adhere to the original intent of the U.S. Constitution. Still Judiciary chairman in 1991, Biden voted against confirmation of Clarence Thomas, who was nevertheless narrowly approved by the Senate.

A reliable liberal Democrat, the senator distinguished himself from the outset of his career in Washington as a supporter of leftist causes. Always favoring increases in the national debt ceiling, foreign-aid programs, and federal involvement in education, he even backed imposing federal wage and price controls on America's industry soon after he arrived on Capitol Hill. He endeared himself to America's left wing by voting to give away the American Canal in Panama to the Marxist government of Omar Torrijos in 1978, and he further entrenched himself in their grip when he backed creation of the Department of Education in 1979.

A reliable vote on lax immigration policies, he supported providing legal services to illegal immigrants as far back as 1980 and amnesty for them in 1982. It was no surprise when the Delaware senator was found supporting the 2006 comprehensive immigration proposal that was correctly labeled amnesty before it was mercifully defeated after a tsunami of opposition arose from grass-roots America.

Not only has he been a consistent supporter of funding for the United Nations, he backed the first President Bush's reliance on UN Security Council resolutions for justification to attack Iraq in 1991, and he supported the second President Bush's similar reliance on ...