Has had with lawmakers this week. This is what he said in the last hour. We cant do too much here. We can do too little. We can do too little and sputter. The end result is, its not just a Macro Economic impact on the economy and our ability to compete internationally. Its peoples lives. Real live people are hurting. We can fix it. We got the first jobs report out under President Biden. Its a better report than december. Overall though, we have a long way to go. 49,000 jobs were added last month. The Unemployment Rate fell to 6. 3 in january. We will take a closer look in moments. I want to start with the action in the capitol. We have monica alba at white house, jo ling kent with the jobs report and leigh ann caldwell. President biden will deliver economic information later this hour. What can you tell us about the president s economic focus today . Its the first event, the fact that the white house is having these coronavirus briefings now three times a week from Health Experts and officials, the fact thats happening this hour and then 45 minutes from now, we will see President Biden talk about why the need he will argue is so essential right now for his American Rescue plan. This is something that for months has been a twin crises. Thats how the white house is presenting it, that the pandemic itself as it continues to rage is of great concern, but, of course, the economic fallout is its own kind of issue that needs to be addressed. Thats why you have President Biden inviting house leadership into the oval office for this meeting. Of course, he talked to republicans earlier in the week as well as Senate Democrats to try to see how they can get through the procedural hurdles on this and have a path cleared essentially in congress to try to get this 1. 9 trillion package passed. The white house message over the last few days has been, dont focus on the steep price tag, because the cost of inaction would be much higher. They are trying to argue and make the case to the American People that the need is more urgent than ever. Thats what you will hear from the president later this hour. It is notable that he also wants to have his Health Experts out in front taking questions on the issues of covid19 first. Again, these things are so inextricably linked in the eyes of the white house. Jeff . A great point, monica. Jo, looking at the jobs report, theres one possible good sign. Its that temporary jobs rose for what is i think the Third Straight month. Temp jobs, depending on the industry, can lead to fulltime jobs. What else sticks out to you in this jobs report from january . Its really the damage thats been done to Women Workers all across this country. What we see in this 49,000 jobs added is that this is a very stalled and muted recovery. The Biden Administration is being handed a very, very big uphill climb as the president indicated there. Theres a lot of work to be done. When you dig into the numbers and you take a look at unemployment for women specifically, latino women, 8. 8 , black women, 8. 5 . This is after the average came out for january for 6. 3 . You have asian women at 6. 1 . If you look at the actual situation in terms of retail and hospitality, thats really where the problem is. You see over lets see here. Almost 100,000 jobs lost in january alone. I want to introduce you to simonne who works actually, you know what . I will hand it back to you. Thanks, jo. Monica, jo, thanks. Lets go to the covid briefing. Including by using the Defense Production Act. We will discuss three specific ways we are using the Defense Production Act. First, to increase existing supply of Vaccinations Americans need. Second, to Scale Production of the tests that americans need to get back their lives. Third, to reduce our longterm dependence on foreign production of supplies that we need to protect our workforce and fight pandemics. Before we get to that, i have an announcement or two to make at the top. On monday, you heard me announce that the Biden Administration will Scale Production of athome covid tests from a Company Called illume. Its one of the steps to get back to normal life. We announced by the end of the year, it would produce 8. 5 million tests. Today, you will hear even more action on testing. We will announce six more companies will surge manufacturing of athome test kits with the goal of by summer having millions of americans being able to access athome tests. Multiple of what we talked about on monday. It wont be easy, and it is not happening overnight. But todays announcement represents another step in the long journey back to normal life. In addition, i want to announce that the secretary of defense has approved femas request to augment and expedite vaccinations across the country. He has ordered the first contingent of more than 1,000 active duty Military Personnel to support state vaccination sites. Part of this group will start to arrive in california within the next ten days to begin operations there around February 15th with additional Vaccination Missions soon to follow. The militarys Critical Role in supporting sites will help vaccinate thousands of People Per Day and ensure every american who wants a vaccine will receive one. I know dod will briefing this afternoon with more details. I wanted to make sure you were aware of this in our whole of Government Response. With that, i will turn it over to dr. Walensky. The United States continues to see a decrease in covid19 cases since its peak on january 8th. The number of new cases on february 3rd, approximately 121,000, represents a 61 decrease since the peak on january 8th. Similarly, the number of new Hospital Admissions reported on february 2nd, approximately 10,500, was down nearly 42 since the Hospitalization Peak of 18,000 reported on january 5th. On wednesday, i noted the peak the pace of deaths appears to be slowing and that we anticipated deaths would start to decrease in the coming weeks. Early data suggests now we are starting to see this decrease with a sevenday average number of deaths declining 6. 7 to slightly more than 3,000 deaths per day from january 28th through february 3rd. While we watch these data closely to see if these will be a confirmed trend, prior data do suggest that peaks in deaths usually trail the peaks in cases by somewhere between nine and 20 days. However, we also may see variation in the daily numbers for different reasons, including reporting delays. As such, we will know better if this trend becomes a stable downward slope over the next week. While the data are moving in the right direction, context is important. Because cases, Hospital Admissions and deaths all remain high and well above the levels that we saw in the summer and early fall. In order to keep these trends moving in the right trajectory, we must wear masks, continue to social distance, avoid traveling in crowds and get vaccinated when its your turn. I want to underscore the importance of mask wearing. Today, cdc will be releasing two reports that describe the case the decline in covid19 hospitalization growth rates when statewide Mask Mandates are in place as well as a study detailing Face Mask Use among College Students on College Campuses with Mask Mandates. Finally, i want to highlight another dimension of the covid19 pandemic on society. Specifically, the impact on Mental Health and substance abuse. Yesterday, cdc reported a study among u. S. Adults and found that 28 reported symptoms of depression, 8 reported suicidal thoughts and 18 reported they had started or increased Substance Use to cope with emotions during the pandemic. The study also found that these outcomes were higher for some racial and ethnic groups, including hispanic adults. This study underscores the need to ensure the response to the covid19 pandemic including attention to Behavioral Health needs of communities. And it reminds us that the longstanding Systemic Health and social inequities have put many racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk for poor health outcomes, including covid19. And it underscores the need for Health Equity to underscore everything we can doing. Thank you very much, dr. Walensky. What i would like to do in the next couple of minutes is just to bring you up to date on one of the issues that we discussed at our last briefing, and that is the progress along the way of the j j on the basis of the data from their Ensemble Trial in getting the information to the fda, examining it in preparation for the possibility of an Emergency Use Authorization. The data are now with the fda. They are examining it. They have scheduled the Advisory Committee, the vaccines and related Advisory Committee which will meet in three weeks. Let me review for you where we are and where we hope to go. As you know, the data on efficacy of this Ensemble Trial, which involved three countries, the United States, brazil and the republic of south africa, showed an overall efficacy of 66 . When you unpacked from the different countries, you had a 72 efficacy for mild to moderate disease in the usa, in the republic of south africa, which is of concern to us because of the mutant and the lineage thats dominant in the republic of south africa, namely the b1351. The protection against moderate disease was 57 . The good news is that when you look across all of the countries, the protection against truly severe disease was well over 80 . In fact, about 88. 8 . Also of interest is that in the south african study as well as all of the others, there were essentially no hospitalizations or deaths. The sobering news is that we are dealing with variants which does have clinical consequences as i mentioned on the last Press Briefing of escape from some of the Antibody Protection and a diminish in some of the protection that we have from the current vaccine. The encouraging news is the rather complete protection against very severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths. Now, when you look at whats going on in our own country, clearly, as the days and weeks go by, you see as predicted an increase in the prevalence of the uk variant, the b117 in the United States, which as you well know, has shown by the brits to have an increase in efficiency of transmissibility as well as a recent paper showing there was some increase in pathogensis leading to severe disease. This is something we will have to deal with, because this is something thats expanding in its prevalence in the United States. The point i want to make and end with is something i said last time that i really think its important for us here in the United States to realize. The evolution of variants occurs when you have a certain degree of replication of the virus in the community. That means spread from person to person. Viruses will not evolve and mutate if you do not give them an open Playing Field to replicate and replicate in an unbridled fashion. For that reason, the message that we keep giving, that dr. Walensky and i and others keep giving is that now is the time to do a couple of things. One, double down on the adherence to the Public Health measures we talk about all the time, the Uniform Masking that the president has spoken about, the physical distancing, avoiding congregate setting and washing of hands. At the same time, distribution efficiently and effectively of vaccines. You will hear about that in a moment. The message that we have, when a vaccine becomes available to you, get vaccinated. You will not only be protecting yourself, your family, but you will be making a major step in a positive way to protecting the community. I will stop there and back to you, andy. Thank you. Tim . Thank you, andy. Thank you, dr. Fauci, dr. Walensky. First since i may not be as wellknown as Doctors Fauci and walensky, allow me to introduce myself. Im tim manning. Im an emergency manager, having done disaster and Emergency Response for the past 25 years. Have worked at the local and state level and served as a Deputy Administrator in fema for eight years. I have been a firefighter and emt. I know the importance of having the equipment and supplies you need when you need it on the front lines of a crisis. Right now, i work with teams across the government to ensure our country has the supplies we need not just now but in the future. Thats why on day one, President Biden signed an Executive Order directing us to use all necessary powers, including the Defense Production Act, to get this pandemic under control. In fact, the administration identified shortfalls in 12 critical categories of supplies. Today, i am announcing three ways in which the administration is using the Defense Production Act authorities to fight this pandemic. One has an immediate impact. It will be felt over the next few months and one will help foreign manufacturing for ppe over the longterm. Our first action gets pfizer more equipment and supplies that are enabling them to ramp up production and deliver more vaccine faster. Second action will deliver more than 60 million Point Of Care tests or athome tests by this summer. Thats in addition to the news andy announced monday about the illume test. Our third action will help america produce more surgical gloves that our workers desperately need. Let me start with increasing Vaccine Production. Since january 20th, we have increased the supply we are providing states by over 20 . Right now, one of the limiting one of the factors constraining increased manufacturing of vaccines is limited equipment and ingredients. Thats why we are leveraging a power of the Defense Production Act, the ability to ensure supplies and material critical to our National Defense are going to areas of greatest need. This is called a Priority Rating. If the federal government puts a Priority Rating on a contract, it means that company can say a vaccine manufacturer, gets first access to the product before anyone else. Today, we announcing we are expanding Priority Ratings for pfizer to include filling pumps, critical components to manufacture the vaccine. Its actions like these that will allow them to hit their targets of delivering hundreds of millions of doses over the coming months. We told you that when we heard of a bottleneck on equipment, supplies or Technology Related to vaccine supply, that we would step in and help. We are doing just that. Second, we are using the dpa to increase our supply of athome covid tests. The countrys well behind where we need to be in testing, particularly the rapid athome tests that will allow us to get back to normal activities like work and school. Earlier this week, we announced investments to bring the first nonprescription athome covid test to americans. I am pleased today to announce that the u. S. Government has plans to invest in another six suppliers to surge domestic testing capability. Thanks to this action, 61 million Point Of Care or athome tests will be available by the end of the summer. To do this will help Industry Partners construct new plans and build new Production Lines in the United States. Bringing critical capacity to the fight and reducing our vulnerabilities to disruptions in the supply chain. Third, we are very focused on procuring the personal protective equipment, ppe, to keep americas Front Line Health Care workers safe. Theres a need for masks, shields, gloves. We currently arent producing these at the rate we need to keep up with demand. We are working to increase the availability of n95 masks. But another critical area of concern we hear over and over is surgical gloves. Right now, we dont have enough gloves. We are nearly 100 reliant on overseas manufacturers to export to us our countrys surgical gloves that protect health care workers. Thats unacceptable. We are using our authorities to fix it. Over the past two weeks, we have pushed forward an effort to expand domestic manufacturing of surgical gloves. Im pleased to announce that we will build plants to make the raw materials, the rubber, for surgical gloves here in the United States and will help Build Factories to make those gloves right here in the u. S. As well. By the end of the year, we will produce more than a billion gloves a month right here in america. We will make enough to satisfy half of all the u. S. Healthcare Community Demands right here on u. S. Shores. These are just three examples of how we are using the dpa strategically and effectively in our national response. Theres more to come. I know theres a great deal of interest in where and with whom we are contracting. For reasons ofprocurement law, im not able to disclose that until contracts are finalized. We are about halfway through. Over next few weeks, expect more announcements about the way we are using it to combat the virus. I want to end by Encouraging Congress to act. Some of our additional plans to use dpa, including more Domestic Sequencing to track variants or ramp up tests require funding. Congress could help this effort greatly by passing the American Rescue plan. With that, i will turn it back over to andy. Thank you, tim. Why dont we go to some questions . Thank you, everybody. First we will go to peter soldon at the hill. Thanks. I wanted to ask on Rapid Testing, i hear the announcements you are making. Some people have pointed to the fda as sort of a bottleneck on the Rapid Testing and say theyre not authorizing they are taking too conservative a view of accuracy comparing it to pcr and not authorizing simple rapid tests that can be millions per day, maybe even more plentiful than what you are talking about. I wonder, is there any consideration of creating a new Approval Pathway or taking more steps to authorize more rapid tests . Thank you. We understand everybody who has something submitted to the fda wants their product approved. Having been around the fda for some time that when they go fast, people criticize them. When they go slow, people criticize them. I think we should be delighted with the announcement today, which i think is counterfactual to the question. Having 60 million more tests available is what the country needs. It will change things significantly. Im very excited about this announcement. I think Many Americans will be as well. Great. Next, michael wilner. Thanks for doing this. Two questions from me. First, the pentagon announced it approved 1,110 active Duty Service Members to support five fema Vaccination Centers. Can you tell us where those Vaccination Centers will be . Secondly, the National Strategy says the administration plans to accelerate the pace of vaccinations by encouraging states to move through Priority Groups more quickly. What is more quickly . Can you be specific what your guidance has been to states . If you are leaving it to states to manage, what about your guidance is different from the Prior Administration which also endorsed the guidelines . Thanks for the question, michael. I believe Department Of Defense will hold a briefing this afternoon to answer questions specifically about their announcement. All i can tell you is that it is its a critical part of our all of Government Response and the team work i observed since i have been here. I think with regard to increasing the pace of vaccinations and moving through Priority Groups, let me first start by saying, all of us starting from the president recognize that americans are eager to get vaccinated and that we should have we want to get that done as safely and equitable as possible. I would love to tell you we are sitting on stockpiles of vaccines we found when we came here. Unfortunately, thats not the case. We have been distributing vaccines as quickly as possible. We increased two periods in a row the amount of vaccines that states are getting. We are in constant conversation about an end to end last mile approach to getting vaccines in peoples arms. That is, i think, taking improving the states ability to get vaccines in arms more quickly. As i pointed out earlier in the week, when we got here on january 20th, about 46 of the supply delivered to states had been administered. That number is now over 60 . Im not going to speak to the administration before ours. We are looking forward. We see lots of improvement opportunities. I think we have taken some. Were going to work with states to find additional ones. Next question. Thanks. Next we will go to sara murray at cnn. Thank you guys for doing this. I appreciate it. My first is for dr. Walensky. I wanted to follow up on some of her comments about teachers. We are wondering why it would be safe for teachers to return to the classroom if they have not been vaccinated and whether that is considered the dcds official guidance that teachers can go back into the classroom even if they have not been vaccinated. Secondly, im just wondering what steps the administration is considering to try to ramp up production of the j j vaccine assuming it get our understanding is supply will be limited in the beginning. Dr. Walensky . Happy to answer that. I want to emphasize our goal is to get children Back To School. School should be the last places closed and first opened. Our goal is to make sure in getting children Back To School that we do so with the safety of the children and the safety of the teachers as utmost and critical in making sure that happens. Among the things that we need to do to make sure that schools are safe is to make sure that the Community Spread of the disease is down. That means its all of our responsibility to work to get our children back to School Safely and our teachers back to School Safely. We are actively working on the guidance. The official guidance will be released in the week ahead. With regard to your second question of Johnson Johnson, you are correct as is the case with other vaccines, we have not found that the level of manufacturing allows us to have as much as we think we need coming out of the gate. Without giving you a direct answer to your question for reasons that i hope are obvious, every option is on the table to figure out how to accelerate manufacturing in the event that the fda does approve the Johnson Johnson vaccine. Next question. Next, Chris Najerian at the los angeles times. Hello. I wanted to see if this is the First Official use of the Defense Production Act to speed the production of the vaccines. Is it going to increase the pace of Vaccine Production ahead of what was previously announced or just ensure that production meets the targets previously announced . Tim, do you want to take the first . You are welcome to take the second or i can, if you would like. Sure. Thanks, andy. This is this amounts to the first sequence of actions on the Defense Production Act we have taken under the Biden Administration over the last couple of weeks. There have been ratings people probably are familiar with in the last days of the trump administration, there was some limited use of the Defense Production Act on the pfizer vaccine. There have been dpa ratings placed previously over the course of the last year in the manufacturing of the vaccines. By the Previous Team as well. As far as the second question, will defer back to andy. So i think the use of the Defense Production Act that tim outlined is what is one of the things thats allowing pfizer to meet targets. They announced an acceleration of targets last week of when they will deliver vaccines. I think our partnership with them is one of those reasons. Im not going to say its the entire reason. But its a critical factor. Next question. Last question will go to tom christopher. Can you hear me . Yes. Thank you. My question is for dr. Fauci but really for any of you. First, two questions. First, can you tell me how frequently you on the team are in contact with President Biden and Vice President harris and how responsible do you think they have been to your Policy Recommendations . My second question was, are you looking for or have you seen any evidence of the impact of President Bidens mask orders . Dr. Fauci, i would never dream of taking a question that was intended for you. Thank you, andy. The interaction with the president is frequent. We have only been at this now for just a couple of weeks. I have already had two i think three interactions with the president in a direct briefing situation, either virtually or twice at white house. Once in the state dining room and once in the Oval Office Just last week. He is very, very much involved literally on a daily basis, obviously, because you have jeff briefing him continually. Personally as a member of the team, together with dr. Walensky and others on the team, we have seen him at least once a week, maybe a little bit more. I think thats that was this week, i think, you are referring to as well, not last week. Still friday, believe it or not. On that note was there another part to your question we didnt answer . Yes. I was asking can you hear me still . Yes. I was asking if you are looking for and or have you seen any evidence of the affects of President Bidens mask orders . I am going to ask dr. Walensky if you have seen any data thats emerged on increases in mask use recently. Thank you for that question. I think its probably too early to reflect on what is happening with the mask order now, because it will be we have a lot of things that have happened at the same time. First, cases are coming down. I think that the mask order is helping in those cases coming down. Whats happening is that we are coming off of the case bump from the holidays. A lot of things are happening at once. We are going to be watching the mask data very carefully. As i mentioned earlier, a report did demonstrate in ten states that when mask orders were in place that after three weeks, Hospital Growth Rates went down. I think its too early to tell. Im encouraged with the decrease in case rates right now. Thank you, dr. Walensky. Thank you all for attending this briefing and our other briefings this week. We think it was a productive week here. The team is working incredibly hard. We are very cognizant of the fact that the public is eager to get their vaccinations and eager to move beyond this pandemic. I want to thank everybody on the government side and the private sector who has been demonstrating the team work we need to get this done and move past it. Thank you. We will talk to you again next week. We have been watching the administrations covid19 Press Briefing. Among the headlines, we heard andy slavitt say the Department Of Defense approved the deployment of a little more than 1,000 active duty personnel who will be sent to support Mass Vaccination Sites. We learned that Six Companies will boost manufacturing of athome test kits. On the issue of school reopenings, which is a big issue for those of who you have children, dr. Walensky, who heads the cdc, she said vaccinations of teachers are not a prerequisite for the safe opening of schools. She was asked that question again directly. She chose not to engage on the substance but she said that official guidance from the cdc will be forthcoming. We will watch for more on that. I want to bring in blythe adamson. Shes a testing for america advisor. I want to start with this news about the Johnson Johnson vaccine. It applied for an Emergency Use Authorization from the fda. Could be out in a matter of weeks. The j j vaccine is a single dose vaccine. The others require two shots. How much of a game changer could this be in the overall trajectory of the fight against this virus . This Johnson Johnson really will be a game changer for a few reasons. One of them, its just one dose. I think that one of the most valuable attributes is the temperature stability. This can be refrigerated for months, unlike the other products on the market now that require really, really fancy freezers to keep them cold through the supply chain. I think this is probably going to open up more access to people that are living in rural communities, that are harder to reach and might have a more difficult time getting all the way to one of the Mass Vaccination Sites in a major city hub. I want to draw on your experience as an economist and talk about the president s covid relief propoproposal. House democrats are pushing for a standalone vaccine bill to Fund Development and distribution right away. This would be outside of the president s 1 1. 9 trillion bill. They dont want to break it up and pass it individually. As an economist and epidemiologist, what do you think is the appropriate way to go right now in terms of getting money out as quickly as possible to the states that need it . Well, resources are necessary to be able to implement the vaccine as soon as possible. As americans, we want to get it delivered as soon as possible and into peoples arms as soon as we can. This is going to give us greatest amount of health gains in the long run and the soonest time to really having a robust economic recovery. The politics of that and getting that money to states, i will leave the politics to congress. Great to have you this morning. We appreciate it. In a few minutes, we expect President Biden to talk about the new jobs numbers, the economy and his push for more covid relief. We will go there live as soon as it starts. First, we will talk to to major city mayors about what they need from this right now. 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With a companion that powers a digital world, traded with a touch. The gold standard, so to speak ; we were watching the white house covid briefing. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrapped up a news conference, her first oncamera reaction after the house voted to strip her of her Committee Assignments. That vote included 11 of her fellow republicans voting with democrats to remove her. Garrett haake joins me now. He was at that Press Conference and just got to a camera. Was there anything noteworthy from the congresswoman today . Reporter its clear she will not back down on her adversarial approach to the media, to democrats, to anyone who disagrees with her. What this Press Conference was was about 20 minutes of kind of right wing Media Criticism and a few minutes of taking questions, including about what she sees as her role here. She did try to say that the way that the democrats and 11 republicans who voted to strip her of her Committee Assignments acted last night would silence her constituents. She contradicted herself a bit. I want to play for you her point here and explain it on the other side. Yesterday, when the democrats and 11 of my republican colleagues decided to strip me of my Committee Assignments, education and labor and the budget committee, you know what they did . They stripped my district of their voice. They stripped my voters of having representation to work for them. Reporter a few seconds later in that same Press Conference, she said she was glad to be stripped of her assignments because the committees are a waste of time, she says. Now its opportunity for her to be more vocal and support positions she agrees with. She went out of her way to praise former President Trump and called this his party. This did feel like a targeted message to one particular viewer in the palm beach, florida, market. Garrett, a question for you. You are such a keen observer of these things. There is this question of why someone like marjorie Taylor Greene gets all of this attention when this is clearly the thing that she wants. You said something yesterday to Nicolle Wallace that i want to draw you out on. You said marjorie Taylor Greene is likely the first of many who will be held to account for what happened in the capitol on january 6th. Take it from there. Reporter i still stand by that. The thing that pushed democrats and those 11 republicans to this point was not greenes Conspiracy Theories but her endorsement of violence, whether on facebook on statements about speaker pelosi. This building is not going to tolerate that anymore after january 6th. I think what you saw was the house the democratically controlled house of representatives saying, this is something we can control and were going to control it. Were going to clean this up. Were going to punish her and set an example that this behavior is not acceptable going forward. Whether she will matter in the future, i think she will matter less. There was quite a bit of media. I dont think any of us took it live. I dont think her answers were substantive. If shes not going to engage in a serious way on any of the actual debates that are happening up here and will be over the next couple of months, i think the attention going to her will be less and less and less as is befitting typically a Freshman Member of the Minority Party in the u. S. House. Great point. Nbcs garrett haake, great to see you. Right now, we are keeping an eye on the white house where President Biden is set to speak any minute. He is expected to address the economy and his push for the American Rescue plan. We will go live to his comments as soon as he starts. First, cities are in limbo waiting to see what kind of relief may come from the federal government. Two city leaders in particular are paying close attention to a big warning from dr. Anthony fau fauci. The mayors of the two cities with teams in the big game join me now. Good to see you both. Tampa is hosting this weekend. How is the city getting ready for potential crowds . How are you keeping people safe . We have been preparing for this event for over a year now. I put in an Executive Order. We have had a Mask Ordinance for indoors for some time. I recently put into affect an outdoor Mask Ordinance in those specific locations that we know we will have large gatherings of fans. We are passing out we had a donation of 150,000 masks. We have passed out thousands of masks to our visitors. We also have individuals in those areas reminding people to wear those masks. We are going to have the best super bowl ever. Its going to be safe. Whats the message that you are sending to people in your city who may want to get together or may want to host a Big Super Bowl Party . First of all, i want to commend the people of tampa and the mayor. They have shown how this can be done responsibly. Back home in kansas city, this is something we have been preaching throughout the entirety of the pandemic, making sure you are only watching the game in small groups, wearing masks, do things like being responsible, ordering takeout, doing extra steps you can to make sure everybody is safe. I said this different times, we want to make sure that we see the chiefs win a super bowl but we want to make sure friends and family see the next one. Thats the message we will preach. We agree with dr. Fauci on getting that out for this other holiday we have. President biden is set to speak any minute about the economy. Whats your citys biggest economic need from the federal government . We need cities to be recognized. I know mayor lucas feels the same way. We have to have an infusion of funding and relief into our cities across america. We appreciate the Relief Funding that has come through c. A. R. E. S. To states and counties. We need it at the local and municipal level. Mayor lucas, they mentioned a 63yearold bus driver and she was furloughed from her job. She received unemployment for months. It says, quote, shes one of 46,000 missourians that state labor Officials Say received 150 million of Unemployment Aid in error. The state is determined to get it back. The headline says folks are never going to trust us again. How hard will this be for people in your city right now that have to pay back the benefits that they received and frankly should they have to pay that back . I disagree with governments efforts to try to claw back those funds. When we make mistakes with the private sector, we often dont make them pay us back tens of millions of dollars. I see no reason why were going after Hard Working Missourians for this funding. Im proud of the president , our congress for making sure we are getting more funding to people like cindy. Thats what we are working on at the local, state and federal level. I would disagree with anyone trying to take money back because of the states own error. Mayor, in florida, theres a Vaccine Preregistration System supposed to make the rollout less chaotic. Not every county is using it. They report about a 75yearold woman who tried to sign up in one system but her name was actually in another system. Then according to the reporting, it says, quote, on wednesday morning, as she watched a number of available slots quickly disappear on the public site, she stared at her computer and started to cry. Whats your message to folks like her who are struggling to get this vaccine and are trying to use the avenues that are available to them to no avail . We understand the frustration of kathy and many other individuals, not only across the state of florida but nationwide. We have very Effective Administration protocols in place and ready to go. We have administered every single dose of the vaccine that we have received in the city of tampa and in hillsboro county. Unfortunately, nationwide, there is nationwide, there is not the supply necessary to gets individuals vaccinated quickly. But as soon as we get it, we are putting it into arms not only on programs run by the county but also in our minority neighborhoods through the churches. Were putting in 500, 600 vaccines every saturday and sunday in our communities. Finally, lets end this question on an upbeat note since we are talking about the super bowl, or at least thats how we started the conversation. So what are you all wagering . Mayor, well start with you. Kansas city is well renowned for outstanding barbecue, so in the off chance that we are defeated well make sure we get some barbecue to the mayor and the people of tampa. Regardless, well make sure were sharing our side of things. Thank you. Mayor . We are going to share. We are the cr capital of the nation so were going to share some of the worlds finest cigars with mayor lucas and a lot of other treasures from the tampa bay area. I have joked with mayor lucas that we would share enough of tampa bays craft beer to drown all the kansas city fans sorrows when we host the lombardi trophy. Craft beer and kansas city barbecue. You cant go wrong with that. My thanks to the both of you. Were expecting to see President Biden any minute now for a speech on the state of the economy and his push for new covid relief. Well listen to that live once it starts. Plus well take a look at some of the problems with the Vaccine Rollout over in illinois and how some pharmacists want to fix it. Stay with us. Your skin isnt just skin, its a beautiful reflection of everything youve been through. Thats why dove renews your skins ceramides and strengthens it against dryness for softer, smoother skin you can lovingly embrace. Renew the love for your skin with dove body wash. I have always had a passion for doing things with my hands. But theres no rule book for that. I dont wanna follow trends or a market. I want to do something with a purpose because the world responds. Im marcela and i put myself out there with godaddy. This morning illinois is in the bottom ten for coronavirus vaccines per capita, so the Health Department has come up with a new plan to ramp up vaccinations. Tell us more about the situation right now in illinois. Reporter look at those numbers there. Its true that illinois, when you look at it as a share of the entire population, is trailing much of the country in terms of the vaccination rollout. Most people point to the speed that we have not seen in terms of vaccinating people in that 1a population, those longterm care facilities. The governor points at cvs and walgreens. Walgreens says this is a plan we agreed to. But you have local independent pharmacies that have been locked out of that process and say, hey, were ready, able, willing to help. This is one of the few pharmacies in the state actually vaccinating part of that longterm care population that was left out of the federal plan. Listen to my conversation with the owner. When i hear were one of the only ones, im proud and excited but also disgusted. We need more people doing this. We need every independent pharmacy doing this. We need doctors offices doing this. Doctors vaccinate all the time. We have the flu vaccine in the doctors offices. This needs to be in as many places as it can. Reporter the state announced theyre reallocating some of the vaccine doses tied to the 1a population. The hope is for the next group of people there will be more doses available for them. Nbcs shaquille brewster. I appreciate it. Im told the democrats who have been meeting with President Biden and Vice PresidentKamala Harris are speaking to reporters. Lets take you there. Heres House Speaker nancy pelosi. So we will have established the budget plan. Monday well begin working on the specifics of the bill. Hopefully in a twoweek period of time well send something over to the senate and this will be done long before the due date of the expiration of the initiative. In terms of this meeting, the president was his usual valuesbased, knowledgeinformed, and Strategic Thinking in his presentation. It was a joy to hear his commitment to meeting the needs of American People, open, as we all are, to bipartisanship, but nonetheless interested in getting results as soon as we can in the best possible way. We passed a Reconciliation Bill and we later today to have as an option. We would hope we can proceed in a bipartisan way. That was part of the thrust of our meeting with the president. Most of the time the president heard from the leadership of our committees in the house, which are so our leadership is so beautifully diverse, representative of our country in every way. And i couldnt be prouder than to hear their valuesbased knowledgeinformed presentations to the president. So as we leave here, we do so happy that hes there and the Vice President and that the senate well into the early hours of the morning passed a bill that we will be able to finish off today. So, again, we thank the president for his leadership, for the opportunity to share some thoughts with him, but more importantly, to hear from him about his vision for america. This is the American Rescue plan to save jobs, as mr. Defazio tells me, to save jobs. Next were prepared for the recovery act to create many more jobs. Any questions . [ Inaudible Question ] as i said, our hope would be that we would have bipartisanship. I think that having reconciliation the bill is necessary so that we know that we will guarantee that well have results and hopefully give us some leverage with the republicans. I hope that we can Work Together because we are going to work it through. I just want to say, first of all, you ought to remember, we passed four covid19 bills with economic recovery and health with overwhelming bipartisan support. And then for whatever reasons, the republicans decided lets wait. We waited a long time, and a lot of people got hurt. And then we passed a 900 billionplus bill in december, december 16th. That was an overwhelming bipartisan vote as well. My understanding let me finish. We call it reconciliation. Theres nothing in reconciliation that precludes republicans voting for it. Now, i want to say this was a unique meeting that i had in the white house just now, all of us had. Over the last four years this is a unique meeting and were going to have a lot more, because it was not focused on the president. It was focused on the people that we needed to help. My understanding is some democrats are pushing back on the bill saying it should be smaller. My understanding is there are democrats pushing back on the bill because of its size. Is it your understanding you would have enough support for absolutely. Absolutely. I heard about it before i got in this morning and i mentioned to the president this morning is making sure that we dont dial back on 1,400, that 1,400 is on top of the 600 and therefore this is the 2,000 we promised promised. They agreed to 600. Thats the pushback im getting. And im also getting pushback from people to make sure we target what were doing, and we all know that. It should go to the people who need it most. Its just that we are there, we just cant get it reported that we are there. On that score, we have had 17 Reconciliation Bills