ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのPresident Joe Biden holds a news conference

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, folks.  Thanks for being here. 

Well, good afternoon, everyone.  Tomorrow will mark one year since I took office.  It’s been a year of challenges, but it’s also been a year of enormous progress.

We went from 2 million people being vaccinated at the moment I was sworn in to 210 million Americans being fully vaccinated today.

We created 6 million new jobs — more jobs in one year than at any time before.

Unemployment dropped — the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent.

Child poverty dropped by nearly 40 percent — the biggest drop ever in American history.

New business applications grew by 30 percent — the biggest increase ever.

And for the first time in a long time, this country’s working people actually got a raise — actually got a raise.  The people — the bottom 40 percent saw their income go up the most of all those that got a raise.

We cut health insurance premiums for millions of American families. 

And we just made surprise medical bills illegal in this country.  You know those bills you get that you don’t expect — up to $2,000 or $5,000 — from a hospital, beyond what you thought you were going to have to owe because of the consultation you weren’t told was going to cost that much?  No more.  They’re now illegal.

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan and other actions we’ve taken, we’ve seen record job creation and record economic growth in the past year.

Now, thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, we’re about to make a record investment in rebuilding America to take us to be the number-one best infrastructure in the world.  Well, now we’re way below that.

We’ll be creating better jobs for millions of people modernizing our roads, our bridges, our highways, our ports, our airports — everything from making clean water; lead — removing lead pipes that every American can turn on — every American can turn on a faucet and drink clean water — urban and rural and suburban communities.

It’s going to make affordable high-speed Internet available to every American in urban, rural, and suburban areas.  We’ve never done that before.  Now we are.  We’re in the process of that getting that done.

Still, for all this progress, I know there’s a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country.

And we know why: COVID-19.  Omicron has now been challenging us in a way that — it’s the new enemy.

But while it’s cause for concern, it’s not cause for panic.

We’ve been doing everything we can, learning and adapting as fast as we can, and preparing for a future beyond the pandemic.

While I know that after almost two years of physical, emotional, and psychological weight of this pandemic, and has — the impact it’s had on everyone, for many of us, it’s been too much to bear.  We’re in a very different place now, though.

We have the tools — vaccines, boosters, masks, tests, pills — to save lives and keep businesses and schools open.

Seventy-five percent of adults are fully vaccinated.  We’ve gone from 90 million adults with no shots in arms last summer down to 35 million with no shots as of today.  And we’re adding about 9 million more vaccinations each week.

We’re going to stick with our vaccination efforts because vaccinations work.  So, get vaccinated, please.  And get your booster.

Look, we’re also increasing testing.  Should we have done more testing earlier?  Yes.  But we’re doing more now.  We’ve gone from zero at-home tests a year ago to 375 million tests on the market in just this month.  If you buy a test at a store, your insurance will reimburse you. 

On top of that, we’re making 1 billion — 1 billion at-home tests available for you to order and be delivered to your home for free.  Just visit COVIDTests.gov to know how to get that free test kit to your home.

In addition, there are 20,000 sites where you can get tested in person for free, now. 

And now we have more treatments that people can — that — for people — to keep people out of the hospital than any other point in the pandemic, including lifesaving antiviral pills.  We purchased 20 million of these new Pfizer pills — more than any country in the world. 

The bottom line on COVID-19 is that we are in a better place than we’ve been and have been thus far, clearly better than a year ago.  We’re not going back — we’re not going back to lockdowns.  We’re not going back to closing schools.  Schools should stay open.

Because of the American Rescue Plan, we provided the states $130 billion — $130 billion to keep our students and educators safe and schools open: funding for ventilation systems in schools, social distancing, hygiene for classrooms and the school buses.  In addition, we’ve added another $10 billion for COVID-19 tests to be able to be administered at schools.

And many states and school districts have spent this money very well.  Unfortunately, some haven’t.

I encourage the states and school districts that use the funding to protect our children and keep their schools open: Use it. 

COVID-19 is not going to give up and accept things — you know, it’s just — it’s not going to go away immediately.  But I’m not going to give up and accept things as they are now.

Some people may call what’s happening now the “new normal.”  I call it a job not yet finished.  It will get better.  We’re moving toward a time when COVID-19 won’t disrupt our daily lives; where COVID 19 won’t be a crisis but something to protect against and a threat [treat].

Look, we’re not there yet, but we will get there.

Now, the second challenge we’re facing are prices.  COVID-19 has created a lot of economic complications, including rapid price increases across the world economy.  People see it at the gas pumps, the grocery stores, and elsewhere. 

So, here’s what we’re going to do:

A critical job in making sure that the elevated prices don’t become entrenched rests with the Federal Reserve, which has a dual mandate: full employment and stable prices.

The Federal Reserve provided extraordinary support during the crisis for the previous year and a half. 

Given the strength of our economy and the pace of recent price increases, it’s appropriate, as the Federal Chairman, Chairman Powell — the Fed Chairman, Powell, has indicated — to recalibrate the support that is now necessary.

I respect the Fed’s — the Fed’s independence.  And I’ve nominated five superb individuals to serve on the Federal Board of Governors — men and women from a variety of ideological perspectives.  They’re eminently qualified, historically diverse, and have earned bipartisan praise.  And I call on the United States Senate to confirm them without any further delay.

And here at the White House and for my friends in Congress, the best thing to tackle high prices is a more productive economy with greater capacity to deliver goods and services to the American people, and a growing economy where folks have more choices and more small businesses can compete and where more goods can get to market faster and cheaper.

I’ve laid out a three-part plan to do just that.

First, fix the supply chain.  COVID-19 has had a global impact on the economy.  When a factory shuts down in one part of the world, shipments to shops and homes and businesses all over the world are disrupted.

COVID-19 has compounded that many times over.

A couple of months ago, in this very room, we talked — we heard dire warnings about how these supply chain problems could create a real crisis around the holidays.  So, we acted.  We brought together business and labor, and that much-predicted crisis did not occur.

Ninety-nine percent of the packages were delivered on time, and shelves were stocked.  And notwithstanding the recent storms that have impacted many parts of our country, the share of goods in stock at stores is 89 percent now, which is barely changed from the 91 percent before the pandemic.

I often see empty shelves being shown on television.  Eighty-nine percent are full, which is only a few points below what it was before the pandemic. 

But our work is not done.  My infrastructure law will supercharge our effort, upgrading everything from roads and bridges to ports and airports, railways and transit, to make our economy move faster and reduce prices for families.

Second thing: My Build Back Better plan will address the biggest costs that working families face every day.  No other plan will do more to lower the costs for American families.  It cuts the cost of — for childcare.

Many families, including the people sitting in this room, if they have children and they’re working full-time — many families pay up to $14,000 a year for childcare in big cities, less than that in smaller ones.  My plan cuts that in half.

That will not only be a gamechanger for so many families’ budgets, but it will mean so much for the nearly 2 million women who — women who’ve left the workforce during the pandemic because of things like childcare.

My Build Back Better plan cuts the price of prescription drugs.  So, insulin that today costs some people as much as $1,000 a month will cost no more than $35 a month.

It cuts the cost of eldercare.  It lowers energy costs.  And it will do all of this without raising a single penny in taxes on people making under $400,000 a year or raising the deficit.  In fact, my plan cuts the deficit and it boosts the economy by getting more people into the workforce.

That’s why 17 Nobel prize winners for economics say it will ease long-term inflationary pressure.

The bottom line: If price increases are what you’re worried about, the best answer is my Build Back Better plan.

Third thing we’re going to do: promote competition.

Look, in too many industries, a handful of giant companies dominate the market in sectors like meat processing, railroads, shipping, and other areas. 

This isn’t a new issue.  It’s not been the reason we’ve have high inflation today.  It’s not the only reason.  It’s been happening for a decade.

But over time, it has reduced competition; squeezed out small businesses and farmers, ranchers; and increased the price for consumers.

We end up with an industry like the meat-processing industry where four big companies dominate the markets, pay ranchers less for their cattle they grow, charge consumers more for beef — hamburger meat, whatever they’re buying.  Prices are up.

Look, I’m a capitalist.  But capitalism without competition

is not capitalism, it’s exploitation. 

So I signed an executive order to tackle unfair competition in our economy, and we’re going to continue to enforce it, along with working with Congress where we can.

I’ll close with this: We have faced some of the biggest challenges that we’ve ever faced in this country these past few years — challenges to our public health, challenges to our economy.  But we’re getting through it.

And not only are we getting through it, we’re laying the foundation for a future where America wins the 21st century by creating jobs at a record pace.  Now we need to get inflation under control.

We have developed ex- — an extraordinarily effective booster shots and antiviral pills.  Now we need to finish the job to get COVID-19 under control.

I’ve long said it’s never been a good bet to bet against the American people or America.  I believe that more than ever today.

We’ve seen the grit and determination of the American people this past year.  But the best days of this country are still ahead of us, not behind us. 

Now I’m happy to take questions.

Yes.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  I know some of my colleagues will get into some specific issues, but I wanted to zoom out on your first year in office.

Inflation is up.  Your signature domestic legislation is stalled in Congress.  In a few hours from now, the Senate — an effort in the Senate to deal with voting rights and voting — voting reform legislation is going to fail.  COVID-19 is taking the lives of 1,500 Americans every day.  And the nation’s divisions are just as raw as they were a year ago.  Did you overpromise to the American public what you could achieve in your first year in office?  And how do you plan to course-correct going forward?

THE PRESIDENT:  Why are you such an optimist?  (Laughter.)

Look, I didn’t overpromise, but I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.  The fact of the matter is that we’re in a situation where we have made enormous progress.  You mentioned the number of deaths from COVID; well, it was three times that not long ago.  It’s coming down.  Everything is changing.  It’s getting better.

Look, I didn’t overpromise, but I think if you take a look at what we’ve been able to do, you’d have to acknowledge we made enormous progress. 

But one of the things that I think is something that — one thing I haven’t been able to do so far is get my Republican friends to get in the game of making things better in this country.  For example, I was reading the other day — and I — I wrote the quote down so I don’t misquote him — a quote from Senator Sununu, when he decided that he wasn’t going to — excuse me, Governor Sununu — when he decided he wasn’t going to run for the Senate in New Hampshire. 

Here’s what he said: “They were all, for the most…” — quote — “They were all, for the most part, content with the speed at which they weren’t doing anything.  It was very clear that we just had to hold the line for two years.  Okay, so I’m just going to be a roadblock for the next two years?  That’s not what I do,” Sununu said. 

He went on to say, “It bothered me that they were okay with that.”  And then he goes on to say, “I said, okay, so we’re not going to get stuff done if we win the White House back” — “if we win the White House back.”  “Why didn’t [we] do [anything] in 2017 and 2018?” 

And then, he said — how did the Republicans Sununu spoke to answer the challenge?  He said, “Crickets.  Yeah, crickets.  They had no answer.”

I did not anticipate that there’d be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done.  Think about this: What are Republicans for?  What are they for?  Name me one thing they’re for. 

And so, the problem here is that I think what happens — what I have to do, and the change in tactic, if you will: I have to make clear to the American people what we are for.  We’ve passed a lot.  We’ve passed a lot of things that people don’t even understand what’s all that’s in it, understandably.

Remember when we passed the Affordable Care Act and everybody thought that — you know, and it really was getting pummeled and beaten?  And it wasn’t until after you’re out of office, and that next campaign when — that off-year campaign.  And I went into a whole — I wasn’t in office anymore.  We were in a whole bunch of districts campaigning for Democrats in Republican districts who said they wanted to do away with — with healthcare, with Obamacare.

And I started pointing out that if you did that, preexisting conditions would no longer be covered.  And they said, “Huh?  We didn’t know that.  We didn’t know that.”  And guess what?  We won over 38 seats because we explained to the people exactly what, in fact, had passed.

And one of the things that I remember saying — and I’ll end this — I remember saying to President Obama, when he passed the Affordable Care Act — I said, “You ought to take a victory lap.”  And he said, “There’s so many things going on, we have don’t have time to take a victory lap.”

As a consequence, no one knew what the detail of the legislation was.  They don’t know a lot of the detail of what we passed.  So, the difference is, I’m going to be out on the road a lot, making the case around the country, with my colleagues who are up for reelection and others, making the case of what we did do and what we want to do, what we need to do.

And so, I don’t think I’ve overpromised at all.  And I’m going to stay on this track.

You know, one of the things that I remember — and I’ll end this with — I was talking with, you know, Jim Clyburn, who was a great help to me in the campaign in South Carolina.  And Jim said — and when he would endorse me — and there was a clip on television the last couple days of Jim.  And it said that we want to make things accessible and affordable for all Americans.  That’s healthcare, that’s education, that’s prescription drugs, that’s making sure you have access — access to all the things that everybody else has.  We can afford to do that.  We can’t afford not to do it.

So, I tell my Republican friends: Here I come.  This is going to be about “what are you for” — “what are you for” — and lay out what we’re for.