>> reporter: one year after taking office, president biden facing a stubborn problem he vowed to solve. long lines and empty shelves exposing a testing system failing once again to match demand. biden's own rhetoric. >> anyone who wants a test should be able to get one, period. >> reporter: biden came into office with a plan to expand testing. pouring billions of dollars to boost manufacturing and ramp up testing in schools and underserved communities. his top priority was vaccines, which kept most people out of the hospital and even slashed the chances of getting and spreading the virus. and then came omicron. >> the vaccines were really doing their job to decrease the number of cases. so there wasn't demand. but then because of the variants, we've had this increase in cases and, therefore, increase in demand. >> reporter: biden has acknowledged coming up short on testing but resists calling it a failure. >> i don't think it's a failure. i think you could argue that we should have known a year ago,