Joe Biden

The only way to get our lives back, to get our economy back on track is to beat the virus.

Barack was so modest, he didn`t want to take, as he said, a victory lap. I kept saying, tell people what we did. He said: 'We don`t have time. I`m not going to take a victory lap.' And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility…

This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country and giving people in this nation, working people, middle class folks, people who built the country a fighting chance. That`s what the essence of it is.

He is a different person than the person who served as senator.

I see a president whose most singular capacity is his capacity to be influenced, a desire to be pushed, a desire to meet this moment potentially.

This is not a Larry Summers and Robert Ruben administration which makes it decisively different from the Obama and Clinton.

This bill centers the poor.

America is leading this, right? We are vaccinating more people than anywhere in the world. We`re no longer leading in deaths. We`re leading in vaccinations.

Tonight, I`m announcing I`ll direct all states, tribes and territories to make all adults, people 18 and over, eligible to be vaccinated no later than May 1.

When I took office 50 days ago, only 8 percent of Americans after months, only 8 percent of those over the age of 65 had gotten their first vaccination. Today, that number is 65 percent.

I`ve told you before I carry a card in my pocket with the number of Americans who have died from COVID to date. It`s on the back of my schedule. As of now total deaths in America, 527,726. That`s more deaths than in World War I, World War…

I need you. I need you.

This is the United States of America, and there's nothing -- nothing -- from the bottom my heart I believe there is just nothing we can't do when we do it together.

I believe we can, and we will. We're seizing this moment, and history, I believe will record, we faced and overcame one of the toughest and darkest periods in this nation's history.

But I need you, the American people, I need you. I need every American to do their part.

This is going to be the number one priority of my new Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona.

And to do this, we're going to go from a million shots a day that I promised in December before I was sworn in to maintaining, beating our current pace of two million shots a day, outpacing the rest of the world.

Let me say that again: all adult Americans will be eligible to get a vaccine no later than May 1, as much earlier than expected.

Put trust and faith in our government to fulfill its most important function, which is protecting the American people.

The only way to get our lives back, to get our economy back on track is to beat the virus.

And today, I signed into law, the American Rescue Plan, a historic piece of legislation to deliver immediate relief to millions of people.

We've lost faith in whether our government and our democracy can deliver on really hard things for the American people.

Because even if we devote every resource we have, beating this virus and getting back to normal depends on national unity.

My fellow Americans, you're owed nothing less than the truth.

It's wrong. It's un-American, and it must stop.