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Second Term

Second Term Vice President

Joe Biden was inaugurated to a second term on January 20, 2013, at a small ceremony in his official residence with Justice Sonia Sotomayor presiding.

Vice President Joe Biden continued to be in the forefront as, in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Obama administration put forth executive orders and proposed new gun control measures.

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. This was because Senate majority leader Harry Reid and other Democratic leaders cut him out of any direct talks with Congress, feeling Biden had given too much away during previous negotiations.

Biden's Violence Against Women Act was reauthorized again in 2013. The act led to related developments, such as the White House Council on Women and Girls, begun in the first term, as well as the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, begun in January 2014 with Biden and Valerie Jarrett as co-chairs. Biden discussed federal guidelines on sexual assault on university campuses while giving a speech at the University of New Hampshire. He said, "No means no, if you're drunk or you're sober. No means no if you're in bed, in a dorm or on the street. No means no even if you said yes at first and you changed your mind. No means no."

Biden favored arming Syria's rebel fighters. As Iraq fell apart during 2014, renewed attention was paid to the Biden-Gelb Iraqi federalization plan of 2006.

Biden himself said the U.S. would follow ISIL "to the gates of hell". In October 2014, he said Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had "poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Al Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al Qaeda, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world."

By 2015, a series of swearing-in and other events where Biden had placed his hands on women and girls and talked closely to them attracted attention both in the press and on social media. In one case, a senator issued a statement afterward saying of his daughter, "No, she doesn't think the vice president is creepy." On January 17, 2015, Secret Service agents heard shots fired as a vehicle drove near Biden's Delaware residence at 8:28 p.m. outside the security perimeter, but the Biden's were not home. An agent observed a vehicle speeding away.

On December 8, 2015, Biden spoke in Ukraine's parliament in Kiev in one of his many visits to set U.S. aid and policy stance on Ukraine. On February 28, 2016, he gave a speech on sexual assault awareness at the 88th Academy Awards; he also introduced Lady Gaga.

In 2015, Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell invited Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress without notifying the Obama administration. This defiance of protocol led Biden and more than 50 congressional Democrats to skip Netanyahu's speech. But in March 2016, Biden spoke at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., saying, "We're all united by our unyielding, I mean literally unyielding commitment to the survival, the security, and the success of the Jewish State of Israel."

On December 8, 2016, Biden went to Ottawa to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Biden never cast a tie breaking vote in the Senate, making him the longest serving vice president with this distinction.