Biden touts 1st year’s efforts

GOP gets blame for deadlock

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden acknowledged Wednesday that the pandemic has left Americans exhausted and demoralized but insisted at a news conference marking his first year in office that he has “outperformed” expectations in dealing with it.

Facing sagging poll numbers and a stalled legislative agenda, Biden conceded he would likely have to pare back his Build Back Better recovery package and instead settle for “big chunks” of his signature economic plan. He promised to further attack inflation and the pandemic and blamed Republicans for uniting in opposition to his proposals rather than offering ideas of their own.

This is a perilous time for Biden as the nation is

gripped by a disruptive new surge of virus cases, and inflation is at a level not seen in a generation. Democrats are bracing for a potential midterm rout if he can’t turn things around.

Biden insisted that voters will come to embrace a more positive view of his tenure — and of his beleaguered party — in time. His appeal to voters for patience came with a pledge to spend more time outside of Washington to make the case to them directly.

Biden also addressed the brewing crisis on the Ukraine border, where Russia has massed some 100,000 troops and raised concerns that Moscow is ready to launch a further invasion.

The president began by reeling off early progress in fighting the virus and showcasing quick passage of an ambitious bipartisan roads-and-bridges infrastructure deal. But his economic, voting rights, police reform and immigration agenda have all been thwarted in a barely Democratic-controlled Senate, while inflation has emerged as an economic threat to the nation and a political risk for Biden.

Earlier in the news conference, Biden accused Republicans of refusing to get “in the game” on governing the country and insisted that he did not overpromise to the American people despite his failure to pass wide-ranging social spending legislation or voting rights protections.

“I did not anticipate that there would be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done,” he said.

“What are Republicans for?” he asked in response to a question about his stalled agenda. “What are they for? Name me one thing that they are for.”

Biden did not mention that much of his agenda has been blocked by Democratic lawmakers, not Republicans. And he insisted that he would not pare back his ambitions in the face of difficult odds in Congress.

“We just have to make the case what we’re for and what the other team’s not,” he said.

In his first year, Biden succeeded early in passing a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill, getting millions of Americans vaccinated, and negotiating a bipartisan bill to invest $1 trillion in the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes and broadband.

But the president has had a series of failures since the summer, including a rushed and chaotic exit from Afghanistan, a monthslong battle with two Democratic senators over his far-reaching social spending legislation and the inability to pass voting rights protections that he describes as crucial to the fate of democracy in the country.

Biden was defensive about his legislative failures, saying that he intended to continue to press for passage of his social policy legislation.

He fielded questions about inflation, nuclear talks with Iran, voting rights, political division, Vice President Kamala Harris’ place on the 2024 ticket, trade with China and the competency of government. Those questions showed the multitude of challenges confronting the president, each of them as much a risk as an opportunity to prove himself.

PANDEMIC STRUGGLES

On the central promise he made during the 2020 campaign — to “shut down” the pandemic that has upended school, work and social life in the country for two years — Biden has struggled to respond to the coronavirus variants that have killed more than 250,000 Americans since the summer.

It was Biden’s seventh solo news conferences as president. The ongoing threat from the coronavirus was evident in the setup of Wednesday’s gathering: A limited number of reporters were allowed to attend and all had to have been tested for the virus and wear masks.

The president defended his response to the pandemic, saying that his administration had succeeded in vaccinating nearly 75% of all adults. He said he wished he had “moved a month earlier” to ramp up testing capacity, but he said that was not a mark of incompetence given everything else his government had done to fight the virus.

“Am I satisfied with the way in which we have dealt with covid and all the things that go along with it?” he said. “Yeah, I am satisfied. I think we’ve done remarkably well.”

He added: “Nobody has ever organized — nobody has ever organized — a strategic operation to get as many shots into arms by opening clinics and being able to get so many people vaccinated.”

Despite his faltering approval numbers, Biden claimed to have “probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen” in a country still coping with the coronavirus.

“After almost two years of physical, emotional and psychological impact of this pandemic, for many of us, it’s been too much to bear,” Biden said.

“Some people may call what’s happening now ‘the new normal,” he added, his voice rising. “I call it a job not yet finished. It will get better.”

The president took questions even as members of his party in the Senate delivered speeches on behalf of the voting-rights legislation in what they already acknowledged was a doomed effort because of unified Republican opposition and refusal by a handful of Democratic senators to change the chamber’s rules.

The president used the event to pay heed to growing anxiety about rising prices. Staring down an inflation rate that has gone from 1.7% at his inauguration to 7%, he called on the Federal Reserve to lessen its monetary boosting of the economy by raising interest rates, which would in theory help to reduce inflation.

“Given the strength of our economy and the pace of recent price increases, it’s important to recalibrate the support that is now necessary,” Biden said. “Now, we need to get inflation under control.”

Despite it all, Biden said he’s convinced the country is still with him — even if they don’t tell that to pollsters.

“I don’t believe the polls,” he said.