President Biden on Thursday celebrates the anniversary of his inauguration on January 20, 2021. In remarks ahead of today’s press conference, he on Wednesday highlighted the progress he has made on both the pandemic and the economy, but he recognized that his work was not done.

“I call it work that is not yet finished,” the president said. “We will get there.”

Biden highlighted progress on the pandemic and the economy. When he took office, 2 million people were vaccinated against Covid-19. Today, 210 million Americans are fully vaccinated and 81 million have received boosters.

The unemployment rate fell from 6.4% to 3.9%, and the economy created more than 6.4 million jobs over the past year. Biden said the child poverty rate has dropped by nearly 40%, new business apps have increased by 30%, and 40% of workers are now earning higher wages.

Reporters pressed the president on parts of his program that have struggled, including the nearly $2 trillion plan for social programs such as education and child and elder care and climate initiatives. called Build Back Better.

Biden said no in response to a question about whether he should be more realistic about the prospects of passing voting rights legislation and Build Back Better.

“I’m not asking for castles in the sky. I’m asking for practical things that the American people have wanted for a long time,” Biden said.

But his response admitted that the set of spending priorities may not garner enough support – even from members of his own party – to pass in one piece. “I think we can split the pack and get as much as we can,” he said.

“The most important thing to do is try to educate the public about what’s at stake,” he said. Biden plans to travel the country and speak directly to the American people about what he has accomplished and what remains to be done.

Biden said Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), who has said he cannot support the current Build Back Better, “strongly supports” early education, as well as some of the ways in which Democrats aim to foot the bill. But Biden also said two major elements of the package, including monthly child tax credits that expired in December and funding to provide two years of free community college, may need to be addressed separately.

The stock market is a benchmark that people use to measure the health of the economy. the

Dow Jones Industrial Average
is up 13.4% since Biden was sworn in. It’s the best first year for a Democratic president since President Barack Obama’s second term, and the 15th-best winning percentage for any president, according to Dow Jones data.

But Biden has also faced criticism.

Despite a national push to vaccinate Americans after a year of business and school disruptions, Biden still faces a continuing upsurge in the fight to tame the pandemic. Inflation was also a dark cloud during his first year in office.

Biden can cite major legislative actions such as the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 economic relief package signed into law last March and the $1 trillion infrastructure spending act. But Americans have expressed frustration with the administration’s confusing advice on Covid health protocols.

Biden acknowledged “frustration and fatigue” with the Covid-19 pandemic, but said the United States is in a better place than it was in March 2020, with vaccines, boosters, masks and antiviral pills, and would not return to lockdowns or the closing down of schools. He said they should have acted faster on the tests.

Despite the current record coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, Biden said his administration is “learning and adapting as fast as we can,” a reference to evolving recommendations around mask-wearing, isolation timeframes and Covid testing supplies.

Biden said the Supreme Court’s decision last week blocking his administration’s plans to require private employers with at least 100 employees to have their workers vaccinated against Covid-19 or tested weekly was a “mistake” .

After coming under fire for a widespread shortage of rapid home Covid-19 tests, Biden announced last week that he was doubling the number of tests the US government would buy to distribute to Americans, to 1 billion.

The covidtests.gov website where people can request their four free rapid Covid tests by residential address was officially launched this morning.

The Biden administration starting next week plans to distribute 400 million free N95 masks from the National Strategic Stockpile to Americans through pharmacies and community health centers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said higher quality masks like N95 are more effective than cloth masks at filtering out most particles.

Asked about other priorities he has spoken about during his presidential campaign, such as immigration reform, Biden asked for patience. “That is going to take time.”

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