(Trends Wide) — President Joe Biden described his first year in the White House as one of setbacks and achievements as he began a news conference.
“Tomorrow will be a year since I took office. It has been a year of challenges, but it has also been a year of tremendous progress,” he told reporters gathered in the East Room.
Biden cited Covid-19 vaccines, record job growth, poverty reduction, more affordable health insurance and a massive infrastructure bill as examples of his administration’s successes.
But he acknowledged that the country was still in an uneasy place.
“I know there is a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country,” he said, citing the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“While it is a cause for concern, it is not a cause for panic,” he said of the omicron variant.
He admitted that his team should have done more to increase testing: “should we have done more?” he wondered: “Yes.” But he listed the steps he took to make the kits more widely available.
“We are in a better place than we have been so far, clearly better than a year ago,” he said.
“I will not give up and accept things as they are now. Some people may call what is happening now the new normal. I call it a job that is not done yet. It will get better. We are moving towards a time when covid-19 it will not disrupt our daily lives,” Biden said.
News in development
Report by Kevin Liptak
