WASHINGTON -- “I always say if you want to know what foreign policy position to take, find out what Joe Biden’s position is and take the opposite opinion and you’ll be right 100 percent of the time,” Rick Santorum said during CNN’s Republican debate in Mesa, Ariz., on Wednesday night.
That’s not quite true. In fact, two of the most consequential laws passed during the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11 featured yes votes from both Biden and Santorum.
Both voted on the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, passed unanimoiusly, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. A month later, in October 2001, both voted for the Patriot Act, passed by a 98-1 vote.
Of course, those votes came during the days when a bipartisan atmosphere prevailed in Congress as lawmakers rallied around President George W. Bush’s launch of the so-called war on terror in reaction to Al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But their unity was not limited to the early days of the post-9/11 era. In early 1995, for example, both men supported the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, passed 93-5, resolving to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That bill was left unsigned by then-President Bill Clinton, and despite becoming law, never led to the embassy’s move.
On the 2012 campaign trail, both Santorum and Newt Gingrich have stated that they will move the embassy to Jerusalem as a first move as president.