Elected 2000, term expires Jan. 2005
Born: Jan. 30, 1941, Lincoln, Neb.
Home: Casper, Wyo.
Education: University of Wyoming, B.A. 1965, M.A. 1966
Religion: United Methodist
Marital Status: married (Lynne)
Political Career: U.S. House of Representatives, 1978–89.
Professional Career: Special assistant to the director of OEO, 1969–70; White House staff assistant, 1971; assistant director of the Cost of Living Council, 1971–73; vice president, Bradley, Woods & Co., 1973–74; Deputy assistant to President Gerald Ford, 1974–75; White House chief of staff, 1975–77; U.S. secretary of defense, 1989–93; senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute, 1993–95; chairman & CEO, Halliburton Co., 1993–2000.
BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS
· Richard Bruce Cheney was born in Lincoln, Neb., on January 30, 1941.
· When he was 13 years old, he moved with his family to Casper, Wyo., where his father directed the local soil conservation district for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
· He was captain of the football team and senior class president at Natrona County High School.
· Cheney went to Yale University on a scholarship, but after less than two years decided to continue his education in his home state.
· Cheney married his high school sweetheart, Lynne Ann Vincent, in 1964. They have two grown daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, three granddaughters and one grandson.
· He earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Wyoming. He then moved to Wisconsin to work on a doctoral degree at the University of Wisconsin.
· As a graduate student, Cheney won a congressional fellowship and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1968.
· He worked first in the office of a young Republican congressman from Wisconsin, William Steiger, and then, in 1969, he joined the Nixon Administration.
· Cheney worked for Donald H. Rumsfeld, who headed the Office of Equal Opportunity.
· When President Nixon selected Rumsfeld as White House counselor in 1970, Cheney joined him as his deputy.
· When Gerald Ford assumed the presidency in August 1974, he served on the transition team and later as deputy assistant to the president.
· In November 1975, Cheney was named assistant to the president and White House chief of staff, a position he held throughout the remainder of the Ford administration.
· He returned to his home state of Wyoming in 1977, and in 1978 was elected to serve as the state's sole Congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives.
· Cheney was re-elected five times and elected by his colleagues to serve as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee from 1981 to 1987.
· He was elected Chairman of the House Republican Conference in 1987 and elected House Minority Whip in 1988.
· He served in Congress from January 3, 1979, until his resignation on March 17, 1989, to accept appointment by President George H.W. Bush as secretary of defense.
· Cheney served as secretary of defense from March 1989 to January 1993, directing Operation Desert Storm.
· For his leadership in the Gulf War, Cheney was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
· He was a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute from 1993 to 1995.
· Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Halliburton Company 1993-2000.
· He was elected vice president of the United States in 2000, and began service on January 20, 2001.
· On Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney was working in the White House while Bush was in Florida.
· After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, he worked out of sight for long stretches in what the White House called an "undisclosed location."
· He remained largely in the background as he helped prepare the Bush administration for the Iraq war.
ON THE ISSUES
QUOTES ON ABORTION
? "President Bush and I will also continue to defend our society's fundamental rights and values. We stand for a culture of life, and we reject the brutal practice of partial birth abortion." 08/14/2004
QUOTES ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
? "One of the problems, of course, with affirmative action in the past has been sometimes it's had the effect of discriminating against the others who were non-minorities, even though they had the same test scores or better test scores; they would be excluded — somebody who had less capabilities would be allowed in. So it's been a problem obviously in the past in terms of how to administer it fairly. I do think that we've — we've probably achieved significant results from affirmative action in many areas." 08/02/2000
QUOTES ON EDUCATION
? "And with respect to how we proceed in terms of trying to reform our educational system, the President believed very deeply when he arrived in Washington that he wanted to push education as his number one priority. And he did. That was the first legislation that we introduced. It became the No Child Left Behind Act. The idea that we would establish standards and measure results and accountability in our school systems so that we could hold, in effect, our public school systems accountable for their performance, and the people in them." 08/12/2004
· "Now, not everybody likes the program (the No Child Left Behind Act). There are those who are not enthusiastic about trying to establish accountability for what is going on in our public school system, and the charge is often made somehow we haven't funded it. But if you look at the facts, the funding for the elementary and secondary education, which is where the funds would come out of for supporting these programs during the time that we've been in office, since 2001, is up 49 percent — a very significant increase." 08/04/2004
QUOTES ON GAY MARRIAGE
? "Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue that our family is very familiar with... With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be able to free — ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to. The question that comes up with respect to the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction, or approval is going to be granted by government, if you will, to particular relationships. Historically, that's been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that basic fundamental decision in terms of defining what constitutes a marriage. I made clear four years ago when I ran and this question came up in the debate I had with Joe Lieberman that my view was that that's appropriately a matter for the states to decide, that that's how it ought to best be handled." 08/24/2004
· "The President has, as result of the decisions that have been made in Massachusetts this year by judges, felt that he wanted to support the constitutional amendment to define — at the federal level to define what constitutes marriage, that I think his perception was that the courts, in effect, were beginning to change — without allowing the people to be involved, without their being part of the political process — that the courts, in that particular case, the state court in Massachusetts, were making the judgment or the decision for the entire country. And he disagreed with that. So where we're at, at this point is he has come out in support of a federal constitutional amendment. And I don't think — well, so far it hasn't had the votes to pass. Most states have addressed this. There is on the books the federal statute Defense of Marriage Act passed in 1996. And to date it has not been successfully challenged in the courts, and that may be sufficient to resolve the issue. But at this point, say, my own preference is as I've stated. But the President makes basic policy for the administration. And he's made it clear that he does, in fact, support a constitutional amendment on this issue." 08/24/2004
QUOTES ON HEALTH CARE
? "Our administration worked with Congress to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, and already millions of seniors are saving on their monthly drug bills. We passed tax-free health savings accounts, which are making health coverage more affordable for many families. And we have increased funding for health care information technology, so that we can eliminate needless expenses and medical errors by creating computerized medical records for most Americans over the next decade." 07/19/2004
· "The picture has become clear across the country: huge payoffs for personal injury trial lawyers; smaller shares of compensation for those who have been wronged; and massive increases in medical liability insurance premiums, for doctors across the country. Our medical liability litigation system is broken." 07/19/2004
· "The President's opponent, Senator Kerry, of Massachusetts, takes a different view of the medical liability crisis. Over his years in the Senate, he's been a consistent opponent of reforms to help doctors, patients, and families control the rising health care costs associated with medical liability. Senator Kerry has opposed or blocked medical liability reform no fewer than 10 times, including twice in the last three years." 07/19/2004
QUOTES ON HOMELAND SECURITY
? "To focus our government on the mission of protecting the American people, we created the Department of Homeland Security. To fund cutting edge drugs and other defenses against a potential biological weapons attack, we passed Project BioShield. Today, under the President's leadership, every American can be certain we are doing everything in our power to defend against a terrorist attack on our homeland." 08/12/2004
QUOTES ON IRAQ
? "Under the President's leadership, we rid the world of a gathering threat by eliminating the regime of Saddam Hussein. Sixteen months ago, Saddam controlled the lives and future of nearly 25 million people. Today, he's in jail." 08/14/2004
· "And there's one story that makes that about as clear as anything could be. It starts with Senators Kerry and Edwards voting yes when the President asked the Congress to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein. But then, when it came time to vote for funds that would provide our fighting men and women with body armor, ammunition, jet fuel, and spare parts, Senators Kerry and Edwards voted no." 08/14/2004
QUOTES ON TAXES
? "Every American who pays federal income taxes benefited from the Bush tax cuts — and so has our economy." 08/14/2004
· "In our second term, we will keep moving forward with our pro-growth, pro-jobs agenda. We will work to make the Bush tax cuts permanent." 08/14/2004
· "A lot of the changes we made in the tax code are scheduled to phase out and revert to those earlier levels over the course of the next few years. And the Death Tax is one of those that's affected like that. The key to solving that problem is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. That's the right answer. And we can do that, but our opponents won't. In effect, what they've said is they want to repeal immediately some of those tax cuts that we've already put through. John Kerry said he wants to change a lot of that within the first hundred days he's in office. And as I say, we think that's wrong." 08/12/2004
QUOTES ON WAR ON TERROR
? "But a good defense is not enough, and so we have also gone on the offense in the war on terror — but the President's opponent, Senator Kerry, seems to object. He has even said that by using our strength, we are creating terrorists and placing ourselves in greater danger. But that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the world we live in works. Terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness." 08/14/2004
· "Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge he would fight a "more sensitive" war on terror. America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was ever won by being "sensitive." President Abraham Lincoln and General Grant did not wage sensitive wars. President Roosevelt and Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur did not wage a sensitive war. A "sensitive war" will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans on the morning of 9/11, and who now seek chemical, nuclear and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more." 08/14/2004
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