WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will tout his first-year accomplishments during a rare formal news conference Wednesday, as his legislative agenda has stalled, hospitals are overwhelmed with Covid patients and the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine looms.
While acknowledging there is more work to do, Biden will highlight the 200 million Americans that have been vaccinated, efforts he has taken to keep schools and businesses open, and the economic growth under this administration during his first year in office, said a White House official.
The news conference will be the first time Biden has formally taken questions from the full White House press corps since a climate summit in Scotland on Nov. 2.
Biden took questions form reporters with approval numbers that have consistently fallen since the summer, as Democrats on Capitol Hill have struggled to find the votes to pass his social spending bill and voting rights legislation — two measures he spent much of his first year in office trying to push through Congress.
He is also hitting the one-year mark with Covid infections surging, including among the vaccinated, and hospitals overwhelmed with seriously ill unvaccinated patients. On the economy, unemployment numbers have dropped, but inflation has hit the highest level in decades.
And on the foreign policy front, the White House has said it expects Russia to invade Ukraine at any point, with diplomatic talks and the threat of sanctions so far failing to lead to a de-escalation of tensions.
The White House has increasingly focused on promoting the two legislative packages Biden was able to get through Congress last year, the American Rescue Plan that provided Covid relief funds in the spring and the $500 billion infrastructure bill passed in the fall.
But the current climate is far from where the administration said it expected to end Biden’s first year when it entered the summer with Covid cases tumbling, hiring surging and the prospect of passing both the infrastructure bill and the larger $1.7 billion social spending measure.
Ahead of the news conference, White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday highlighted areas the White House said represented Biden’s key accomplishments in his first year. She said that the U.S. economy had grown faster than in other nations and that fewer Americans are out of work, with initial unemployment claims having gone from 812,000 a year ago to 210,000. She also cited the Biden administration’s work to get 74 percent of adults fully vaccinated and efforts to get the U.S. to the point where it is producing 375 million at-home Covid tests a month.
“This is progress that’s been made. Obviously there’s more work that’s going to be done, that needs to be done,” Psaki said. “The job is not done yet. But we have a plan to address the challenges we’re facing.”
Biden has held the fewest number of news conferences by a president in the first year in office since Ronald Reagan. Wednesday’s event is just his seventh solo news conference, in addition to three joint events he has held with other world leaders, according to a tally by the American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
While Biden does take impromptu questions from reporters more frequently than some of his recent predecessors after events or when departing or arriving at the White House, he spends less time than other presidents answering those questions and provides shorter answers with few opportunities for follow-up questions, according to an analysis by Martha Kumar, director of the nonpartisan White House Transition Project.
Psaki said Biden has taken questions on about 250 occasions, with an average of three questions each time.
“I think the American people have seen him out there answering questions. He will continue to, that’s an important part of his engagement with the press and the public, and that will be a part of how we continue to conduct ourselves,” Psaki said last week.
Kelly O’Donnell contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
