0 skis. ambition is a good thing. aspiration is a good thing. that's how you motivate people. you should advance your policy agenda but the president was unable. not sure he could have in this social media age. unable to manage expectations in his party for how much they could do. and for americans who don't check their list every day they look at washington and say what the hell is going on there? >> and they look at the prices at the grocery store and they look at the prices at the gase station. we expect president biden to address a number of pressing challenges, including the standoff at the russian/ukrainian border. ginn joining us now, christiane amanpour. what can president biden say today to bring down the temperature of this standoff to convince vladimir putin that an invasion, again, is the wrong idea? >> well, jake, actually in the words of the state department official today, perhaps diplomacy is not dead. a very united and strong front led by the united states with the nato allies has, as you know, been confronting putin over these 100,000 troops. today, for me, the headline is their chief negotiator said publicly in a forum and he's the voice of putin on this issue, we do not want to and we will not strike, attack, invade, whatever, quote, unquote is what he said, ukraine. so that is pretty definitive. and he has putin's ear. and as you know, secretary of state blinken is back in the region. he'll meet with the foreign minister of russia on friday. so diplomacy is not dead. the russians said after the last round of talks we've got nothing else to talk about unless you, you know, exceed to our demands, we've got our troops here and we're not moving them. it appears there is still light at the end of this diplomatic tunnel. and i think that's really important at this time. >> president biden has been a presence in u.s. foreign policy literally for decades. how much do we know about what putin thinks of biden? >> look, it's hard to know what, you know, put yourself in somebody else's head but there are many analysts who have asked these questions and have done enough work. they believe that -- >> christiane, i'm sorry, i have to interrupt. here comes president biden. >> hello, folks. thanks for being here. 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 any time before. unemployment dropped. the unemployment rate dropped to 3.9%. child poverty dropped by nearly 40%. the biggest drop ever in american history. new business applications grew by 30%. 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. people -- the bottom 40% saw their income go up the most of all of those that got a raise. we cut health insurance premiums for millions of american families and just made surprise medical bills illegal in this country. you know those bills you get that you don't expect that are $2,000 to $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, 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. now we're way below that. we'll be creating better jobs for millions of people, modernizing our roads, bridges, highways, ports, airports. everything from making clean water, removing lead pipes, let every american -- that every american can turn on a faucet and drink clean water. rural and urban communities. 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 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 caused -- 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 future beyond the pandemic. all i know that after almost two years of physical, emotional and psychological weight of this pandemic and 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. 75% of adults are fully vaccinated. we've gone from 90 million adults with no shots in arms last summer and 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 the 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 -- for people -- to keep people out of the hospital than any other point in the pandemic, including life-saving antiviral pills. we've purchased 20 million of these new pfizer pills. more than any country in the world. the bottom line on covid-19 is that we're 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 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 our schools open, use it. the covid-19 is not going to give up and accept things -- 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 look. we're not there yet but we will get there p. now the second challenge we're facing is prices. covid is creating complications, including rapid price increases across the world economy. people see it at the gas pump, 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 rest 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 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 are eminently qualified, historically diverse and have earned bipartisan praise. i call on the senate to confirm them without any delay. 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 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 heard dire warnings about how the supply chain problems would create a real crisis around the holidays so we acted. we brought together business and labor and that much-predicted crisis did not occur. 99% 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% now, which is barely changed from the 91% before the pandemic. i often see empty shelves being shown on television. 89% 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 your effort, upgrading everything from roads and bridges to ports and airports. railways and transit. to make the economy move faster and reduce prices for families. second thing, my build back better plan will address the biggest cost of working families face every day. no other plan will do more to lower the cost for american families. it cuts the cost for child care. 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 child care in big cities. less than that in smaller ones. my plan cuts that in half. that will not only be a game changer for so many families' budgets but it will mean so much for the nearly 2 million women who have left the workforce through the pandemic because of things like child care. 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 elder care. 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 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 had 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 are buying. prices are up. look, i am 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 an extraordinarily effective booster shots and antiviral pills. now i 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. i'm happy to take questions. yes. >> thank you, mr. president. some of my colleagues will get into 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. and in a few hours from now the senate -- an effort in the senate to deal with voting rights and vote regform legislation is going to fail. covid-19 is still taking the lives of 1500 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? >> why are you such an optimist? look. i didn't overpromise. what 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 at making things better in this country. i was reading the other day and i wrote the quote down so i don't misquote him. a quote from senator sununuu when he decided that he wasn't -- excuse me, governor sununu when he decided he wasn't going to run for the senate in new hampshire. here's what he said. there are all -- quote, there are 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 road block 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 said, i said, okay, so we're not going to get stuff done if we win the white house back. why didn't we do anything in 2017 and 2018? and then he said, how the republicans sununu spoke to answered the challenge? he said crickets, yeah, crickets. they had no answer. i did not anticipate that there would be such a stallwart 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. so the problem here -- 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 passed a lot. we passed a lot of things that people don't even understand all that's in it, understandably. remember when we passed the affordable care act and everybody thought that, you know, it really was getting pummeled and beaten and it wasn't until after we were out of office and that next campaign, that off-year campaign and -- i wasn't in office anymore. a whole bunch of districts campaigning for democrats and republican districts said they wanted to do away with health care, with obamacare? and i started pointing out that if you did that, pre-existing conditions was no longer 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 had explained to the people exactly what had passed. now 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. he said there's so many things going on we 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 pass. so the difference is, i'm going to be out on the road a lot making the case around the country with my colleagues up for re-election 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 have 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, when he endorsed me, and there was a clip on television the last couple of days of jim. and it said that we want to make things accessible and affordable for all americans. that's health care. that's education. that's prescription drugs. that's making sure you have access. access to all the things 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. mary bruce, abc. >> thank you, mr. president. you mentioned your republican colleagues but your top two legislative priorities, social spending package and voting rights legislation are stalled, blocked by your own party after months of negotiation. you are only guaranteed control of washington for one more year before the midterms. do you need to be more realistic and scale down these priorities in order to get something passed? >> no. i don't think so. when you say more realistic, i think it's extremely realistic to say to people, because -- let me back up. you all really know the politics of this country and your networks and others, you spend a lot of time, which i'm glad you do, polling this data, determining what the american people's attitudes are, et cetera. the american people overwhelmingly agree with me on prescription drugs. they overwhelmingly agree with me on the cost of education. they overwhelmingly agree with me on early education. they overwhelming -- i can go on the list on child care. and so we just have to make the case of what we're for and what the other team is not for. look, we knew all along that a lot of this was going to be an uphill fight and one of the ways to do this is to make sure we make the contrast as clear as we can. and one of the things that i think is -- we're going to have to do is just make the case -- i don't think there's anything unrealistic about what we're asking for. i'm not asking for castles in the sky. i'm asking for practical things the american people have been asking for for a long time. a long time. and i think we can get it done. >> you're not going to scale down any of these priorities, but so far that strategy isn't working. you haven't been able to get some of these big legislative -- >> i got two real big ones done. bigger than any president has ever gotten in the first year. >> but currently, mr. president, your spending package, voting rights legislation, they're not going anywhere. is there anything that you are confident you can get sig