WASHINGTON (CN) — Even as parts of the platform on which he campaigned remain tied up in the Senate and his approval numbers hit an all-time-low, President Joe Biden held a press conference one day before the anniversary of his first year in office to tout his administration's job numbers, pandemic relief policies and massive infrastructure legislation.
The assembly was a rare move for the president, who has held few formal press conferences over these last 364 days but has given increasingly impassioned speeches in recent weeks, including orations on the anniversary of Jan. 6 and voting rights in Georgia.
While much of the country's attention has been focused on key pillars of the president's legislation that seem doomed to fail in the Senate, including voting rights legislation and the massive Build Back Better Act, Biden urged Americans and members of his party to focus on what his administration has gotten done rather than on the policies still in limbo.
"It’s been a year of challenges, but it’s also been a year of enormous progress,” Biden said
The start of Biden's term has been marked so far by his championship of a $1.2 trillion Covid-19 relief package that helped ease some of the financial devastation that the pandemic has wrought on so many families, schools and businesses.
The unemployment rate fell from more than 6% when Biden took office to 3.9%, the largest single-year drop on record, and he advanced the nationwide rollout of vaccines.
"We went from 2 million people being vaccinated at the moment I was sworn in to 210 million Americans being fully vaccinated today," Biden said.
Biden also heralded his $1.2 trillion infrastructure legislation, a historically massive plan that seeks to repair dilapidated infrastructure and combat climate change.
Despite these accomplishments, Biden's approval numbers have been slipping throughout his time in office, hitting an all-time low one year into his presidency, and significant portions of his agenda are facing rough waters in Congress.
A Gallup poll released this week found 40% of U.S. adults approve of the president's job, his lowest approval rating to date and one of the lowest ratings of any post-World War II president, higher only than the approval ratings of President Donald Trump.
"For all this progress, I know there's a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country, and we know why — Covid-19," Biden said.
Biden acknowledged the strain a lack of available testing has put on the country as cases of the omicron variant surge and overwhelm hospitals.
"Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes. But we're doing more now," Biden said.
Biden's news conference came in the middle of an ongoing showdown over voting rights and the filibuster in the Senate, where voting rights legislation aimed at creating federal standards for mail-in and early voting as well as doing away with partisan gerrymandering is set to fail.
When asked if he can stand behind the legitimacy of future elections, Biden said the fairness of future elections depend on congressional action as some states are working "to make it hard for minorities to vote."
"I think it would easily be illegitimate," Biden said. "The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in proportion to not being able to get these reforms passed."
Biden said some portions of the voting rights amendments sitting in the Senate may be able to be broken into individual legislation.
"I predict that we'll get something done on the electoral reform side of this," Biden said.
Voting rights legislation was a key hallmark of Biden's 2020 campaign, which also promised sweeping expansions of the social safety net in the form of his Build Back Better agenda, legislation that is on ice and stalled in the Senate.
The president said portions of his massive $1.85 trillion proposal to expand the social safety net may not end up on the cutting-room floor, citing funding for universal preschool and $500 billion in funding for clean energy as potential legislation that could get passed on their own.
"I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now, come back and fight for the rest later," Biden said, acknowledging Democrats will likely need to break off individual provisions of the massive plan to get legislation passed.
One aspect of the bill for which Biden is not holding out hope, however, is the child tax credit, saying it may not pass even if carved out into its own bill.
Reporters pressed Biden about whether his administration took on too lofty of an agenda, a sentiment he pushed back on.
"I didn't overpromise. I think if you take a look at what we've been able to do you have to conclude we've made enormous progress," Biden said.
The president also hit out against Republican opposition to significant parts of his agenda, expressing surprise at Republican obstructionism.
"I did not anticipate that there would be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was to make sure President Biden didn't get anything done," Biden said. "What are Republicans for? Name one thing they're for."
But the president made clear he isn't letting up on his agenda.
"Can we maintain the democratic institutions that we have, not just here, but around the world to be able to generate democratic consensus and how to proceed? It's going to be hard. It's gonna be hard, but it requires leadership to do it. And I'm not giving up with the prospect of being able to," Biden said.
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