- 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.
But the best days of this country are still ahead of us,
not behind us.
I'm happy to take questions.
- Inflation is up.
Your signature domestic legislation
is stalled in Congress.
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 has still taken the lives
of 1,500 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?
- 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 of making things better in this country.
- You mention your Republican colleagues,
but right now, your top two legislative priorities,
your 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?
- 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.
One of the things that I think 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.
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.
- Is there anything that you are confident
you can get signed into law before the midterm elections?
- Yes, I'm confident we can get pieces,
big chunks of the Build Back Better law signed into law.
- Given how ineffective sanctions have been
in deterring Putin in the past,
why should the threat of new sanctions give him pause?
- Well, because he's never seen sanctions like the ones
I've promised will be imposed if he moves.
- The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell,
said that midterm elections
are going to be a report card on your progress,
on inflation, border security, and standing up to Russia.
Do you think that that's a fair way to look at it?
- I think the report card's going to look pretty good,
if that's where we're at, but look, the ideal that --
Mitch has been very clear he'll do anything to prevent
Biden from being a success.
I get on with Mitch.
I actually like Mitch McConnell.
We like one another, but he has one straightforward objective --
make sure that there's nothing I do
that makes me look good, in his mind.
But think about it.
Did you ever think that one man, out of office,
could intimidate an entire party
where they're unwilling to take any vote contrary
to what he thinks should be taken
for fear of being defeated in a primary?
- After we sit here for more than an hour,
I'm not sure I've heard you say if you would do anything
differently in the second year of the term.
Do you plan to do anything differently?
- Yeah, look.
I'm going to go out and talk to the public.
I'm going to do public forums.
I'm going to interface with them.
I'm going to make the case of what we've already done,
why it's important, and what will happen
if they support what else I want to do.
Number two, I'm bringing in more and more,
now that I have time -- I mean, literally, like you.
I'm not complaining.
It's 12, 14 hours a day.
No complaint. I really mean it sincerely.
The third thing that I'm going to be doing a lot more of
is being in a situation where I'm able to bring --
I'm going to be deeply involved in these off-year elections.
Folks, it is now almost 6:00.
With all due respect,
I'm going to see you next conference, okay?
Thank you.