Biden marks a year as president and says he has ‘probably outperformed’ – live

Joe Biden confirmed the Build Back Better Act will likely have to be separated into multiple bills in order to get some of its components passed.

“It’s clear to me that we’re going to have to probably break it up,” the president said.

Biden noted that Joe Manchin, who announced his opposition to the spending package last month, supports some of the bill’s key provisions, such as establishing universal access to free prekindergarten.

“I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now and come back and fight for the rest later,” Biden said.

Joe Biden was asked whether he believes the threatened sanctions against Russia will be enough to prevent Vladimir Putin from approving an invasion of Ukraine, when such economic measures have not proven effective with the Russian president in the past.

“He’s never seen sanctions like the ones I’ve promised will be imposed if he moves,” the president replied.

Biden noted he has had “frank discussions” with Putin in recent weeks, as fears have intensified over a potential invasion of Ukraine.

The US president said that, if Putin moves forward with a full-scale invasion, it will be a “disaster” for the Russian economy.

“Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Biden said.

Joe Biden said coronavirus will not disappear anytime soon, but he expressed confidence that the situation in the US will continue to improve in the months ahead.

“I’m not going to give up and accept things as they are now. Some people may call what’s happening now the ‘new normal.’ I call it a job not yet finished,” Biden said.

“It will get better. We’re 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.”

Biden’s remarks come as the Omicron variant causes a surge in cases of coronavirus in the US, putting more pressure on hospitals and resulting in high demand for tests.

While touting the successes of his first year in office, Joe Biden acknowledged that many Americans remain unhappy with the state of the nation.

“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.

The president said he understood Americans are tired nearly two years into the pandemic, but he emphasized the US now has the tools to save lives and keep the economy open — vaccines, tests and masks.

Nodding to criticism that the White House should have made coronavirus tests more widely available sooner, Biden said, “Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes. But we’re doing more now.”

Tim Scott, a Republican of South Carolina, criticized Joe Biden for comparing the voting restrictions enacted in the past year to the racist policies of the Jim Crow era.

Scott, the only Black Republican member of the Senate, said the issue of voting rights is “really important to all Americans but specifically important to Americans from the Deep South who happen to look like me”.

“As I listened to the president talk about the importance of stopping what he characterized as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’, I felt frustration and irritation rising in my soul,” Scott said. “I am so thankful, thankful that we are not living in those days.”

After Scott spoke, Cory Booker, another one of the three Black members of the Senate, stepped up to the podium to denounce the voting restrictions and their disproportionate impact on minority voters.

“Don’t lecture me about Jim Crow. I know this is not 1965. That’s what makes me so outraged. It’s 2022,” said Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey.

“And they’re blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented. I’m not making that up. That is a fact.”

The Senate debate over voting rights and filibuster reform has been going on for hours now, and the chamber may not wrap up its work today until 9pm or 10pm ET, per PBS NewsHour.

The Senate debate over Democrats’ voting rights bill and their suggested changes to the filibuster continues, with Republicans denouncing their colleagues’ proposals.

Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, pledged that he would leave the Senate if his party ever amended the filibuster — or rather the legislative filibuster, as Republicans already eliminated the filibuster for supreme court nominees.

“The day that Republicans change the rues for the filibuster is the day I resign from the Senate,” Tillis said.

“And I believe that I have a number of members on my side of the aisle that would never do it. So you don’t have to worry about the argument, ‘If you don’t change it now, they’ll just change it when they hit the trifecta.’ It’s not going to happen.”

It will be interesting to see if those comments ever come back to haunt Tillis.

Joe Biden held a virtual meeting today with some of the senators who traveled to Ukraine over the weekend to meet with the country’s president and discuss concerns over a potential Russian invasion.

“President Biden and the senators exchanged views on the best ways the United States can continue to work closely with our allies and partners in support of Ukraine, including both ongoing diplomacy to try to resolve the current crisis and deterrence measures,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

“President Biden commended the strong history of support for Ukraine from both sides of the aisle, and agreed to keep working closely with Congress as the Administration prepares to impose significant consequences in response to further Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

Secretary of state Antony Blinken is also in Ukraine today, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy before traveling to Geneva for talks with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Friday.

Blinken has warned that Russia could take “further aggressive action” against Ukraine “at any moment,” the Guardian’s Luke Harding and Andrew Roth report: