It’s Monday.
When the Special Sunday Edition of Biden Bits was posted, President Biden had not tweeted. He ended up with a Sunday Tweeting Total of 2 tweets and 0 retweets.
The video snip is 43 seconds long. There’s cheesy music playing as images cut from chef José Andrés work and President Biden’s visit to the World Central Kitchen in Warsaw, Poland. The only voiceover is chef Andrés
Faith in Humanity restorer chef José Andrés: In the worst moments of humanity, the best of humanity shows up. World Central Kitchen–we landed in the Ukraine conflict right in the town of Mar’inka within 24 hours of the Russian attack. We began feeding right in Mar’inka. We began partnering with other NGOs, with food trucks, with local restaurants and businesses, just trying to make sure that instead of everybody working on their own, we work as We The People. And that’s why we’re here. This is what we’ve been doing here, that’s what I’ve been seeing here. And if anything, I’m leaving prouder of who we are as the people of the world.
The video clip is taken from remarks he gave on the United Efforts of the Free World to Support the People of Ukraine from Warsaw, Poland.
President Biden: It’s not enough to speak with rhetorical flourish, of ennobling words of democracy, of freedom, equality, and liberty. All of us, including here in Poland, must do the hard work of democracy each and every day. My country as well. That’s why — (applause) — that’s why I came to Europe again this week with a clear and determined message for NATO, for the G7, for the European Union, for all freedom-loving nations: We must commit now to be in this fight for the long haul. We must remain unified today and tomorrow and the day after and for the years and decades to come. (Applause.) It will not be easy. There will be costs. But it’s a price we have to pay. Because the darkness that drives autocracy is ultimately no match for the flame of liberty that lights the souls of free people everywhere.
For Monday, March 28th, 2022, President Biden has received his daily brief. This afternoon the President will announce; his Budget for Fiscal Year 2023, which will reduce deficits by more than $1 trillion over the next decade, advance safety and security at home and around the world, and make the investments needed to build a better America; the Director of the Office of Management and Budget also delivers remarks.
President Biden has tweeted…
He’s tweeted 1 time so far for Monday…
His full statement:
Budgets are statements of values, and the budget I am releasing today sends a clear message that we value fiscal responsibility, safety and security at home and around the world, and the investments needed to continue our equitable growth and build a better America.
My Administration is on track to reduce the federal deficit by more than $1.3 trillion this year, cutting in half the deficit from the last year of the previous Administration and delivering the largest one-year reduction in the deficit in U.S. history. That’s the direct result of my Administration’s strategy to get the pandemic under control and grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. We spent less money than the last Administration and got better results: strong economic growth, which has increased revenues and allowed us to responsibly scale back emergency spending. My budget will continue that progress, further reducing the deficit by continuing to support the economic growth that has increased revenues and ensuring that billionaires and large corporations pay their fair share.
At the same time, my budget will make investments in securing our nation and building a better America. We willsecure our communities by putting more police on the street to engage in accountable community policing, hiringthe agents needed to help fight gun crime, and investing in crime prevention and community violence intervention.
I’m calling for one of the largest investments in our national security in history, with the funds needed to ensure that our military remains the best-prepared, best-trained, best-equipped military in the world. In addition, I’m calling for continued investment to forcefully respond to Putin’s aggression against Ukraine with US support for Ukraine’s economic, humanitarian, and security needs.
My budget also makes the investments needed to reducecosts for families and make progress on my Unity Agenda – including investments to cut the costs of child care and health care; help families pay for other essentials; end cancer as we know it; support our veterans; and get all Americans the mental health services they need.
All told, it is a budget that includes historic deficit reduction, historic investments in our security at home and abroad, and an unprecedented commitment to building an economy where everyone has a chance to succeed.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
The Presidential Budget can be found here. The PDF is 156 pages. As the *Washington Post says; The White House’s annual budget submission to Congress is often ignored or dramatically changed by the legislative branch before enacted into law. But they still reflect useful indications of the administration’s goals and priorities, as well as how its thinking on key issues has changed over time.
*the article has been gifted there should be no paywall.*
The White House posted an “on the record press call” with; OMB Director Shalanda Young and CEA Chair Cecilia Rouse on the President’s FY23 Budget
MR. FRIEDLANDER: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for this on-the-record call about the President’s Fiscal Year 2023 Budget. We’re joined by OMB Director Shalanda Young and Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse. They will each offer a few brief comments at the top, and then we’ll hold time for some questions at the end.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
Again, this call will be on the record, and it’s embargoed until 11:00 a.m. Eastern time today.
You all should have received embargoed materials from our team a short while ago. If, for some reason, you haven’t, please reach out to us and we’ll make sure you get what you need.
With that, I will turn it over to Director Young.
Director Young:
Thank you, Rob. Thank you all for joining. And Happy Budget Day, as I like to call today.
You’ve heard the President say that budgets are about values, and his budget for fiscal year 2023 makes our values clear in three important ways.
First, this budget is fiscally responsible. It shows that we’re on track to reduce the deficit by more than $1.3 trillion this year. That’s the largest-ever one-year decline and less than half of the 2020 deficit the President inherited.
This progress was not an accident. It was a direct result of the President’s strategy to combat the pandemic and grow our economy from the bottom up and the middle out — a strategy that was built on smart, fiscally prudent investments that helped jumpstart our recovery.
And we’ve seen that strategy pay off. In 2021, we created more than 6.5 million jobs — the most our country has ever recorded in a single year. Our economy grew at 5.7 percent — the strongest growth in nearly 40 years. And the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.8 percent — the fastest decline in recorded history.
The budget outlines the President’s vision to expand this progress. Its investments are more than fully paid for through the tax reforms that ensure corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share, including a new billionaire minimum income tax. It achieves significant deficit reduction over the next decade, and it ensures that no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay an additional penny in new taxes.
Second, the budget invests in security both at home and abroad. Here at home, it includes critical investments to keep our communities safe, fund crime prevention and community violence intervention, put more cops on the beat for community policing, fight gun violence, and advance criminal justice reform.
And during what will be a decisive decade for the world, the budget makes one of the largest investments in national security in U.S. history, strengthening our military and leveraging our renewed strength at home to meet pressing global challenges.
And third, the budget delivers on the agenda the President laid out in his State of the Union Address to help build a better America. It advances a bipartisan Unity Agenda through proposals to take on the mental health crisis, combat the opioid epidemic, support our veterans, and accelerate progress against cancer.
And it makes other key investments in the American people, building a stronger economy and promoting job creation, improving our country’s public health infrastructure, combating the climate crisis, and advancing equity and opportunity across our economy and our country.
As the President made clear in his State of the Union, he’s also committed to working with Congress to pass legislation that reduces the deficit; cuts healthcare, energy, childcare, and other costs for families; and reforms the tax system.
Because those discussions with Congress are ongoing, the budget does not include specific line items for the investments associated with that future legislation, nor does it count any of the savings from the prescription drugs or tax reforms that the House advanced as part of its Build Back Better Act.
Instead, the budget incorporates a reserve for the legislation and lays out the President’s three principles: Legislation must cut costs for families, cut the deficit, and expand the productive capacity of the economy.
We’ve been clear that the President wants to sign legislation that cuts costs for families and reduces the deficit. But to be conservative, the budget reflects this reserve fund as deficit neutral.
So, stepping back, what this budget shows is that we can grow the economy from the bottom up and middle out, and invest in the American people, and that we can do it in a smart, fiscally responsible way.
With that, let me turn it over to Chair Rouse to talk about the budget’s economic outlook and forecast.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
Chair Rouse:
Thank you, Director Young. And thank you for your time today. I want to use this opportunity to cover two important elements of the budget: the economic motivation and the economic forecast behind this policy. This budget builds on the solid economic gains of the first year of this administration.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
Remember where we were when President Biden took office. The pandemic still had a strong grip on the economy, and recovery was uneven and anemic. We actually lost 115,000 jobs in December of 2020 alone, and roughly 4 million workers had been unemployed for more than six months. Unemployment was forecast to come down but slowly.
Today, the country looks very different. The recovery over the last year has been extraordinary; quicker than independent forecasters projected. With over three quarters of the adult population fully vaccinated, the economy has been able to reopen and rebound.
Over 2021, real output grew by 5.6 percent — the fastest since 1984. The unemployment rate fell at its fastest pace since modern data began in 1948. The labor force participation rates of Americans 25 to 54 years old grew by the most since 1979.
This robust recovery has put us in a strong position today. The U.S. economy is more than 3 percent larger in inflation-adjusted terms than it was before the pandemic — the fastest recovery in the G7.
Healthy household balance sheets and a strong labor market make us more resilient to external shocks.
The strong recovery has also put us in a better fiscal position as faster growth helps lower the deficit.
The Fiscal Year ‘23 budget builds on this solid economic growth. It is a continuation of President Biden’s commitment to address longstanding issues in the economy and make investments that will ensure strong, sustainable growth that benefits all Americans.
First, the budget is fiscally responsible. Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, the economy recovered faster in 2021 than expected. Revenues are up, and the pandemic relief (inaudible).
The result is that the expected deficit in Fiscal Year 2022 is $1.3 trillion smaller than it was in Fiscal Year ‘21. And we believe the policies in this budget will further reduce the deficit by another trillion over the next decade.
A lower deficit will help ease long-term inflationary pressures and make our fiscal trajectory more sustainable.
Second, the budget bolsters domestic and foreign security. Increased security here and abroad not only protects lives, but it also reduces uncertainty, which allows economic activity the room it needs to renormalize and grow as the pandemic eases.
Third, the budget makes important investments in the American people. A healthy, cared-for workforce is a productive workforce. Moreover, the budget lowers costs for families such as healthcare, childcare, and energy — measures that will ease price pressures over the longer term.
I’d like to close with a word about our forecast. In many ways, the economy looks healthier today than it did when we locked our forecast all the way back in last November. The economy has created an average of 600,000 jobs per month since then, including through the Omicron wave. And the unemployment rate has fallen an additional 0.8 percentage points since then.
Indeed, private forecasters now project the unemployment rate to be lower than the 3.9 and 3.6 percent we projected for 2022 and 2023, respectively.
But challenges have arisen since last November as well. The most obvious is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will have ramifications that are not reflected in our forecast. For example, the inflation [sic] will li- — the invasion will likely put upward pressure on energy and food prices. That, in turn, could reinforce inflation that was already an issue prior to the invasion due to the pandemic, supply chain constraints, and a strong demand for goods.
Independent forecasters therefore expect somewhat slower GDP growth but still anticipate that inflation will come down.
As I said earlier, the strength of our recovery has put us on solid ground to weather economic shocks. Americans are back to work, and the economy is stronger than anyone, including the federal government and private forecasters, imagined when President Biden took office.
The President’s 2023 budget presents a fiscally fair and responsible approach to build on the progress we’ve made so far to invest in America and meet our future challenges.
On this special occasion I will be posting the Q&A:
Q: Happy Monday to everyone. Thank you so much for doing this. I was hoping to get more sense of how you’re looking at inflation, given that from 2023 onward there’s the expectation that CPI goes to 2.3 percent. Is the idea that we just need another year of adjustment? Or what’s kind of underlying that forecast?
CHAIR ROUSE: I’m sorry, the question about the forecast itself? Or is it — is the question about how we’re seeing inflation now, going forward?
Q: The economic assumptions have inflation CPI at 2.3 percent in table S-9. And I’m curious for — is the implication there that — that, in a sense, like, we just have another year of rough inflation in that assumption, or kind of what you’re forward thinking on that is?
CHAIR ROUSE: Okay. So we an- — so the — first of all, let’s remember that the forecast was locked on November 10th of 2021. So that was quite a while ago. So this — this economic forecast, if we were updating today, we would look at it somewhat differently.
But let’s understand where the inflation forecast comes from. We were living through a pandemic where we supported households, as we needed to do, to get through this health crisis, and at the same time, the supply chains crumbled beneath us.
As a result, we had a mismatch between supply and demand, which generated some inflation. We are not alone. This — we see this inflation across the developed world with other countries that were supporting their households, their workers, their businesses through the pandemic.
Nonetheless, we expected, back in November, that inflationary pressures would ease as the economy started to renormalize; as we learned to keep our economic activity going, supporting us through the pandemic, and as supply chain challenges started to renormalize. And as the extraordinary support both by the monetary policy — so, in our case, the Federal Reserve — and fiscal policy, which was no longer needed, could be eased, we expected these inflationary pressures to ease over the coming year.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine. That has created additional upward pressure on prices. That happened in February, well after our forecast was already completed. We do expect that that is going to create additional price pressures over the coming year.
But again, the fundamentals are that we expect that as we learn to keep economic activity going through additional waves of the pandemic — we hope there won’t be many — but as we continue to work through the challenge of the pandemic, that we will keep economic activity going, supply chain pressures will ease, the extraordinary measures will start to roll off as well, and we expect the economy to normalize.
But there’s tremendous uncertainty. But we and other external forecasters expect that inflation will ease over the coming year (inaudible).
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
Q: Hi, thank you so much for doing this. I have a couple of questions. The first is: If you could explain the Reserve fund a little bit more, because it looks like, from the — from the S-2 table, that the deficit reduction is including the tax proposals that you guys are putting forward. So I’m trying to understand how the reserve fund would work but also not impede the deficit reduction you guys are hoping to achieve over the next decade. And then, just quickly, I was wondering if there are any changes to the top individual income rate in this and then also the provision on stock buyback. I didn’t see that listed here just yet.
DIRECTOR YOUNG: So, let me be clear — and thank you for the question and the opportunity to explain. The tax proposals we’re holding for the deficit-neutral reserve fund are different than the tax proposals we are accounting for our deficit reduction proposals.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
We’re paying for our investments on top of what we’re holding in the deficit-neutral reserve fund. We felt it was the responsible thing to do to not double-count those savings, so those things — those are two separate proposals. So you don’t see a line item of those tax proposals in the deficit-neutral reserve fund, but they are separate and apart from the line items you do see included, as far as tax reforms in the budget.
As far as the individual rate, the top rate goes to 39.6 percent — the same as under President Obama and Biden administration. And so those are, I believe, the two major questions you had.
Q: Hey, guys. Thanks for doing — thanks for doing this. I’m hearing a weird echo, but we’ll try anyway. Basically, my core question is: A lot of the budget experts are saying, you know, look, the reason the deficit is falling is because the expiration of inherently temporary economic programs, and it’s kind of absurd for the administration to be taking credit for the decline from inherently temporary economic programs. Can I get a response to that? Is that (inaudible), or do you think that (inaudible)?
DIRECTOR YOUNG: Three letters: ARP. This was not by accident. And had the President not had the wisdom and the fortitude, as some people were saying it was time to retract and stop doing pandemic spending, I don’t believe and many experts don’t believe we’d be here. The growth we saw last year, the highest in 40 years, that added more jobs than ever recorded last year, we don’t believe was by accident. And without the American Rescue Plan, we don’t believe we would be here.
The scarring we’ve seen after past recessionary (inaudible) and after the last economic failure after Wall Street, we saw significant scarring that took years for the economy to come through. So, we believe that was the right medicine at the time. And everything that the President is rightfully taking credit for, you can find right back to the American Rescue Plan.CHAIR ROUSE: Hi, this is Cecilia Rouse. And I would just add that if we go back to the Great Recession, it took about four years for us to return to this normal fiscal posture, and we’re doing it in two.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
Q: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for doing this question. One question on the inflation assumption. So, 2.3 percent this year and next year, and stable, is not realistic. Under a more realistic inflation assumption, can you still claim $1 trillion in deficit reduction? Would you still stand by that number? And then, also the fact that you have a placeholder for Build Back Better, does that mean that the talks are close? Can you tell us how hopeful you are coming to a deal? Thank you.
DIRECTOR YOUNG: Eric, I’ll take the first one, the — your second question first, before turning it over to Chair Rouse on inflation.
What we’re not going to do — and I think I mentioned in the opening remarks — is get ahead of congressional negotiations. The deficit-neutral reserve fund is meant to leave the space, the revenue specifically, to allow congressional negotiators the room to do what President Biden has asked. He has asked for legislation that reduce costs for Americans and reduces the deficit. So that is what the budget is putting forth.
CHAIR ROUSE: And regarding the inflation: So, as I noted earlier, this budget was locked and our forecasts were locked before various factors, which have led forecasters, including the Fed, to raise their inflation expectations. Of course, the most recent example is the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its impact on energy and food prices.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
We will have a chance to update our forecast for the next budget. And those will — and that update will reflect recent events that were unknown at the time of the forecast.
But regarding the impact of this inflation on deficit impacts, so what you see is that — this shows we have actually done analysis of the impact of unexpected changes in inflation on our budget. And based on that analysis, inflation above the forecast raises both expenditures and revenues by similar amounts, such that it will have little impact on the deficit overall.
Q: Thanks. This question is for Chair Rouse and it also relates to the inflation forecasts. You also have a very low interest rate forecast, which I — you locked in last November. But as we’ve all seen, the Federal Reserve has accelerated its plans to tighten (inaudible), and it’s already set in plans to get the funds rate to 2.8 percent next year, and now it’s assumed that it will get there this year — perhaps as soon as this year and perhaps even further. That’s quite a lot higher than the Treasury yield forecasts in your economic assumptions. Can you tell me how a more up-to-date interest rate assumption might affect the budget outlook, the deficits and debts, et cetera?
CHAIR ROUSE: Sure. So, it’s important to remember that our debt service line in our summary tables is based on real debt service and real interest rates. So even as nominal rates have been rising, real rates remain negative and will very likely remain negative in the near term.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
In the longer term, our interest rate assumptions remain in sync with the market and other forecasters’ expectations, leaving to the fact that under the President’s budget, real interest rate payments remain below their historical average throughout the coming decade.
The White House has now posted a fact-sheet; The Biden Administration’s Historic Investment in Pandemic Preparedness and Biodefense in the FY 2023 President’s Budget
COVID-19 has exacted an unfathomable toll on our nation and the world, causing millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses globally, and highlighting the inter-dependency between our nation’s health security and that of the world. Throughout the pandemic, Americans and people around the world have personally experienced the health, social, and economic impacts caused by infectious diseases. The COVID-19 response has illuminated both longstanding and newly discovered limitations in our local, national, and international health systems and health security capabilities. It has also resulted in an unparalleled, multisectoral, whole-of-society response, which has galvanized breakthrough innovation. The Biden-Harris administration has made great progress in combatting COVID-19 and building better health security to protect against future pandemics and other health emergencies. However, much more is needed to prevent future biological catastrophes. In America and around the world, people want to know: what can we do to stop future pandemics? We must increase and sustain our investments across the U.S. Government to better prevent, detect, and respond to pandemics, and to build a world safe and secure from biological threats.
The FY23 President’s Budget includes a historic $88.2 billion request for mandatory funding, available over five years, across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to prepare for future biological threats in support of objectives within U.S. national and global biodefense and pandemic preparedness strategies and plans. This investment will fund transformative improvements in our capabilities to prevent, detect, and respond to emerging biological catastrophes. If we want to create a world free of pandemics and other biological catastrophes, the time to act is now.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
The Budget will:
- Transform our capability to rapidly produce and deliver countermeasures against pandemics and other biological threats. The Budget includes $40 billion for theHHSASPR to invest in advanced development and manufacturing of countermeasures for high priority threats and viral families, including vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and personal protective equipment (PPE). This funding would support development of novel technologies, including rapidly scalable vaccine production technologies; technologies to simplify the administration of vaccines; effective and broadly-acting therapeutics; next-generation PPE; rapidly scalable, affordable, and effective diagnostics; pathogen-agnostic detection technologies; and tools to suppress pathogen transmission in the built environment, including ventilation, sterilization, and antimicrobial and antiviral surfaces. This funding will also support manufacturing capacity to surge countermeasure production in response to future biological threats, whether from COVID-19 variants or another emergent biological threat. These investments build towards the ambitious goals of developing effective vaccines and therapeutics within 100 days of identifying a biological threat, producing sufficient quantities to vaccinate the United States population within 130 days, and supporting surge production to rapidly meet global needs.
- Strengthen our public health infrastructure and early warning capabilities. The Budget provides $28 billion for the CDC to enhance public health system infrastructure, domestic and global threat surveillance, public health workforce development, public health laboratory capacity, and global health security. These efforts will ensure the nation is prepared to effectively contain and mitigate future biological threats and will enable States, localities, tribal nations, and Territories to mount a rapid and robust response to future outbreaks. These investments will complement discretionary funding to modernize public health data collection and increase capacity for disease early warning forecasting and analyzing future outbreaks, including at the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics. Funding will also promote health equity in pandemic response infrastructure through initiatives to support marginalized and underserved communities through community-based public health services and support state-based and international efforts to control antibiotic resistance.
- Invest in basic research to enable an effective response to novel pandemics and biological threats. The Budget provides $12.1 billion to NIH for research and development of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics against high priority biological threats, including safe and secure laboratory capacity and clinical trial infrastructure. Developing a vaccine against COVID-19 built on twenty years of prior federally funded scientific research on coronaviruses. Accordingly, the Budget supports preclinical and clinical research and development of prototype vaccines and therapeutics against priority viral families. These investments will provide essential foundational knowledge to meet the goal of developing vaccines and therapeutics against novel biological threats within 100 days.
- Modernize and streamline our regulatory infrastructure. The Budget provides $1.6 billion for the FDA to expand and modernize regulatory capacity, information technology, and laboratory infrastructure to support the evaluation of medical countermeasures.
- Advance biosafety and biosecurity in the United States and globally to prevent biological incidents. The Budget provides $1.8 billion within the total $88.2 billion request to enable the CDC and NIH to expand efforts to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity practices domestically and globally. This includes applied research and innovation in biosafety and biosecurity, which will expand capabilities to identify and minimize safety and security risks in the design and development of biotechnology.
- Transform global health security and pandemic preparedness for COVID-19 variants and future biological threats. A biological threat anywhere can turn into a health emergency everywhere. The most effective way to respond to biological threats is to respond to it at its source. The Budget includes $6.5 billion in mandatory funding for the Department of State and USAID to make transformative investments in pandemic and biological threat preparedness globally, which complements ongoing U.S. investments to also strengthen health systems. This includes $4.5 billion in seed funding to establish global, regional, and local capacity through a new financial intermediary fund at the World Bank focused on global health security and pandemic preparedness. This effort will build on U.S. global health security investments and provide a more structured platform to account for and measure international gaps and gains. It will also accelerate U.S. leadership to bring other donors to the table and will provide $500 million over five years to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) to support innovating science and technological capabilities to shorten the cycle for development of safe, effective, and affordable vaccines.
These investments will build on and accelerate innovations to prepare for future COVID-19 variants, and ensure the capabilities we are building to combat COVID-19 are sustained for future pandemics.Acknowledging the possibility that future COVID-19 variants could have severe consequences for U.S. health and livelihoods, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, HHS, and the White House COVID-19 team launched the Pandemic Innovation Task Force, which assembled science and technology leaders across the executive branch to accelerate pandemic innovations with the potential to have a major impact on our ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and future biological threats.
Collectively, these activities will build capabilities the nation urgently needs to respond to future pandemics and biological threats from any source, strengthen international systems so that we can detect threats early and respond rapidly, and enable the nation to decisively act on the lessons from COVID-19.
White House.gov. 03/28/2022.
A programming note for the White House daily brief…
On Sunday upon her return from Europe with President Biden, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced that she had tested positive for the coronavirus.
This afternoon, after returning from the President’s trip to Europe, I took a PCR test. That test came back positive.
I last saw the President during a socially distanced meeting yesterday, and the President is not considered a close contact as defined by CDC guidance. I am sharing the news of my positive test today out of an abundance of transparency.
Thanks to being fully vaccinated and boosted, I have only experienced mild symptoms. In alignment with White House COVID-19 protocols, I will work from home and plan to return to work in person at the conclusion of a five-day isolation period and a negative test.
White House.gov. 03/27/2022.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had announced her positive coronavirus test prior to departing the U.S., for Europe.
In light of the recent positive at the podium today is Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates, joining Bates in today’s briefing are; Director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan
End programming note…
President Biden remarks are expected at 2:45 p.m. D.C., time.
The daily press briefing is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. D.C., time.
This is an Open Thread.
