0 of your second, third, and fourth years? >> ashley? >> when you gave thattors forceful speech about voting rights in atlanta you conveyed it as being on the right side of history. my question, does president biden believe those people who voted against the filibuster to open up debate on voting rates, are they racist? >> joe, quickly to you. >> american consumers are hurting so much. what additional measures are you prepared to take to curve inflation and bring it down. >> that does it for us. thanks to all of you for watching. "deadline: white house" picks up our special coverage here on msnbc now. se" picks up our special coverage here on msnbc now. hi there, everyone. it is 4:00 in new york. we are less than two minutes away from president biden's news conference. just his second solo domestic news conference as president. this marks the official ends of his first year in office. the white house today setting the stage for what they are describing as a reset moment, an opportunity to focus on president biden's accomplishments rather than the messy business of legislating. a senior white house official reminds us today that what president biden accomplished gives him those items to out the, things like the american rescue plan and the infrastructure bill in the year leading up to the mid terms. jonathan lemere in politico this morning describes the specifics thatter with likely to hear from the president when he takes the podium in just a minute. quote, in his first six months he successfully steered a $1.9 trillion covid relief bill to passage, the administration rolled out a massive vaccine distribution and unveiled a series of policies that by the end of his first year in office would help cut unemployment from nearly 9% on inauguration day to 3.9% now. all of that is what we are likely to hear the president play up today. he will also pace questions from the press on some of the low points of the last year. here is the president. >> 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 sborn 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%. 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 the categories. 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 after $2,000 to $5,000 from the hospital beyond what you thought you were going to have to owe because of the consultation you weren't told it was going to cost that much. no more. they are now illegal. thanks to the american rescue plan, and other actions we have taken we have seen record job creation, record economic growth in the past year. now, thanks to the bipartisan infrastructure bill, we are about to make a record investment in rebuilding america to take us to be the number one best infrastructure in the world. now we are way below that. we will be creating better jobs for millions of people modernizing our bridges, our highways, our roads, our ports, our airports. everything from making clean water, removing lead pipes, that every american can turn on a faucet and drink clean water in urban, rural, and suburban communities. it is going to make high-speed sbreshl available to every american in urban, rural, and suburban areas. we have never done that before. now we are. we are in the process of getting that done. still, for all this progress i know there is a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country. we know why. covid-19. omicron has now been challening us in a way that it is the new enemy. while it is cause for concern, it's not cause for panic. we have been doing everything we can, learning and adapting as fast as we can, and preparing for a future beyond the pandemic. i know that after almost two years of physical, emotional and so logical weight of this pandemic and the impact it has had on everyone, for many of us it has been too much to bear. we are in a very different place now, though. we have the tools. vaccines, boosters, masks, tests, pills, to save lives and keep businesses schools open. 75% of adults are fully vaccinated. we have 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 are adding about 9 million more vaccinations each week. we are going to stick with our vaxation efforts because vaccinations work. so get vaccinated, please. and get your booster. look, we are also increasing testing. should we have done more testing earlier? yes. but we are 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 are making $1 -- 1 billion at-home tests available for you to order and be available to you at your home for free. just visit covidtest.gov in order to find out how to get those pretests. in addition, their 20,000 sites where you can get tested in person, for free, now. and now we have more treatments to keep people out of the hop than at any other point in the pandemic including life saving anti-viral pills. we purchased 20 million 6 these new pfizer pills, more than any country in the world. bottom line on covid-19 is that we are in a better place than we have been and have been thus far, clearly better than a year ago. we are not going to back -- we are not going back to lockdowns. we are not going back to closing schools. schools should stay open, because the american rescue plan we provided the states $130 billio $130 billion to keep your student educators safe and open. funding for ventlation, social distancing, hygiene for classes and school businesses. in addition we have added another $10 billion for covid-19 tests to be able to be administered at schools. many states and school district versus 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 -- you know, it's not going to go away immediately. but i am not going to 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 not yet finished. it will get better. we are 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. now the second challenge we are 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 are 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 fuel mandate, full employment, and stable prices. the federal reserve provided extraordinary support during the price crisis for the previous year and a half. given the strength of our dme and the pace of recent price increases it's appropriate as the federal chairman -- the fed chair powell has indicated to recalibrate the support that is now necessary. i respect the fed's independence and i nominated five superb individuals to serve on the fed's board of governors, men and women from a variety of economic sectors. they are qualified, diverse and earned bipartisan praise. i call on the 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 compete, and where more goods can get to market faster and cheaper, i have 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 fiscal tree 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 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. 99% of the packages were delivered on time, and shelves were stocked. and not withstanding the recent storms that have impacted many parts of our country, the share of goods in stock at stores is 89% now, which has wearily changed from the 91% before the pandemic. i often see empty shelves being shown on television, 89% of full, which is only a few points below what it was before the pandemic. but our work not done. my infrastructure law will super charge 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, by build back better plan will address the biggest cost that working families face every day. no other plan will do more to lower the costs for american families. it cuts the cost for child care. many families, including the people sitting in this room, if they have children, and are 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 member who have left the work force during the pandemic because of things like child care. my build back better plan cuts the price of prescription drugs so insulin that today cost some people as much as $1,000 a month will cost no more than $35 a month. it cuts the cost of elder care, and 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 work force. 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 are worried about, the best answer is my build back better plan. third thing we are going to do, promote competition. look, in too many industries a handsful of giant companies dominate the market in sectors like meat sproesing, railroad shipping and other areas. this is not a new issue. it's not the reason we have high inflation today. it is not the only reason. it has been happening for a decade. but over time, it has reduced competition, squeezed out small businesses farmers, ranchers, and increased the price for consumers. we ends up with an industry like the meat processing industry where four big companies dominate the markets. pay ranchers less for the 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 your economy and we are going to continue to enforce it along with working with congress where we can. i will close with this. we have faced some of the biggest challenges that we have ever faced in this country these past few years. challenges to our public health, challenges the our economy. but we are getting through it. and not only are we getting through it, we are laying the foundation for 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 boost her shots and anti-viral jobs. now i need to finish the job to get covid-19 under control. i have long said it has never been a good bet to bet against the american people or america. i believe that more than ever today. we have seen the grit, and determine nation of the american people this past year. but the best days of this country are still ahead of us, not behind us. now i am happy to take questions. yes. >> thank you, mr. president. i know some of my colleagues will get into specific issues. i wanted to zoom out into your first year in office. inflation is up, your signature legislation is stalled in congress. in a few hours from now an effort in the senate to deal with voting rights and voting reform 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 during your first year in office? how do you plan to proceed? >> why are you such an optimist? i don't overpromise, but i probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen. the fact of the matter is that we are 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 have been able to do, you would have to acknowledge, we have made enormous progress. but one of the things that i think is something that -- one thing i hadn't been able to do so far is get my republican friends to get into the game of making things better in this country. for example, i was reading the other day -- i wrote a quote down so i don't misquote him. a quote from senator sue knew -- excuse me, governor sue nun you, when he decided he wasn't going to run for the senate in new hampshire. here's what he said, 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 goes on to say it bothers me that they were okay with that. then he goes on to say, okay, so we are 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 '18? and then he said, how do republicans expect to answer the challenge? he said crickets, yeah, crickets. he had no answer. i did not anticipate that there would be such a stall wart 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 are 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 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 pummelled and beaten, it wasn't until after i am out of office in that next campaign when -- that off-year campaign, and i went into a whole -- i wasn't in office anymore. and a whole bunch of districts campaigning for democrats and republican districts said they wanted to do away with health care, with obamacare? i start point 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. one of the things that i remember saying -- then i will ends 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 is so much going on, there is no time to take a victory lap. they didn't know the details of what was passed. so the difference is, i am going to be out on the road a lot making the case around the country with my colleagues who are up for election and others, making the case for what we did do, and what we want to do, what we need to do. and so i don't think i have overpromisedal at all. and i am going to stay on this track. you know, one of the things that i remember -- and i will end this -- i was talking with, you know, jim clyburn, who was a great help to me in the campaign in south korea. and jim said 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 health care. 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 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 i will lay out what we are for. mary brucea, abc? >> thank you, mr. president. you mentioned your republican colleagues but right now your top two legislative priorities, your social spending packages and voting rights are stalled, blocks by your own party. you are only guaranteed control of washington for one more year before the mid terms. 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 is extremely realistic to say to people because -- let me back up. you all really know the politics this country, and your networks and others. you spend a lot of time -- which i am 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 edition. overwhelmingly -- i can go down the list -- on child care. we just have to make the case of what we are 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. 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 are going to have to do is just make the case. i don't think there is anything unrealistic about what we are asking. i am not asking for castles in the sky. i am asking for practical things that the american people have been asking for for a long time amount of long time. i think we can get it done. >> you say you are not going to scale down any of these priorities. so far that strategy isn't working. you haven't been able to get some of these dig legislative ticket items done. >> i got some real big ones done. bigger than any president in the -- >> currently, the voting rights package isn't going anywhere. >> that's true. >> are you confident you can get anything sign into law before the elections. >> yes. i am confident we can get pieces big chunks of the build back better bill signed into law. and i am confident we can take to the case to the american people that the people they should be voting for who will going to oversee whether elections are legit and whatnot should not be left in the hands of republicans to determine whether or not they are going to accept the outcom