President Joe Biden delivered remarks on the United States economy as he is set to leave the White House on Jan. 20.

“Economy has made over the last four years. This morning’s job report shows the economy added more than 250,000 jobs in December, that the unemployment rate has dropped as low as 4.1%, and all told in four years we’ve created 16.6 million new jobs, the most of any single presidential term in history. There wasn’t a month, not a single month, when the economy lost jobs. Another record for any presidency. In fact, the last month America lost jobs was the month before I came to office. And the question is, I want to make it clear, how and why did we make such progress. We did it by fundamentally changing the economic policy of this country. After decades of trickle down economics that primarily benefited those at the very top, Kamala and I and our administration have written a new playbook that’s growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up that benefits everyone. The new playbook is working, but in 10 days, our administration will end and the new administration will begin and we’re going to face another inflection point.

“Do we continue to grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up as we have the past four years, or do we backslide to an economic theory that benefit those at the very top while working people and middle class people struggled for their fair share of growth? Four years ago when Kamala came to office, 3000 Americans were dying per day, per day because of the pandemic. Millions of Americans had lost their jobs and were at risk of losing their homes. Hundreds of thousands of factories and businesses closed creating despair in so many communities all across America. Supply chains were shattered. Prices soared from everything from cars to home appliances. The previous administration had no real plan to get us through one of the toughest periods in the nation’s history. In fact, there’s an old saying, if the only tool is a hammer you have, everything looks like a nail.

“And over the course of decades, our Republican leadership’s trickled down economic was a hammer and working people were the nail, slashing taxes for the very wealthy and biggest corporations, offshoring jobs and factories for cheaper labor overseas while importing products that used to be made in America. To offset its cost, advocates of trickle-down economics ripped the social safety net, trying to privatize social security, Medicare, trying to deny access to affordable healthcare and prescription drug costs. Lifting the fortunes of the wealthy often meant attacking the rights of workers. We came to office with a different vision of America. From the first two months I was in office, I signed the American Rescue Plan to put shots in arms and checks in pockets, to vaccinate the nation and return us to full employment. We followed up with long-term investments in our future. My investing in America agenda, which includes the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Chips and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act, together mark the most significant investment in America since the New Deal. Inflation Reduction Act alone is the most significant investment in climate and clean energy ever, ever anywhere in the world.

“And we make these investments, when we do, we buy American. Buy America has been the law of the land since the thirties. It says that any money the president has authorized by Congress to spend should use American workers and American products. The past administration, including my predecessor, failed to buy American, use American workers, but not on our watch. We’re modernizing roads, bridges, ports, airports, clean water systems, affordable high-speed broadband systems and internet and so much more, and we’ve incentivized building all these large federal projects with American products and American Union labor. Remember the shortage of semiconductors during the pandemic? Those tiny little chips, computer chips the size of your fingertip that power everything in our everyday lives from vehicles and refrigerators to advanced weapons to your cell phones. America invented these computer chips, but over time we stopped making them and shipped to factories overseas for cheaper labor. So when the pandemic hit, we found out how vulnerable America was.

“Supply chains abroad shut down because of the pandemic. We couldn’t get the chips and prices soared. For example, takes over 3000 of these computer chips to build an automobile today. And when overseas factories making those chips shut down, the production stopped and the cost of new car soared. It didn’t have to be this way. I was determined to change that. And that’s what we’ve done with the Chips and Science Act, which has attracted $350 billion in private sector investment in America, including from Korea and Taiwan and other countries. These investments are building new fabs, they call them, the place where they build these chips, new fabs, massive chip factories the size of several football fields. On fields of dream all across America, creating so far 125,000 jobs on the construction side of this, which ultimately create tens of thousands more jobs. Tens of thousands. These jobs in these so-called fabs are paying over a hundred thousand dollars a year and you don’t need a college degree. It’s not just the fabs, these investments are creating opportunities for entire communities, for small businesses creating even more jobs and much more.

“When they build these factories, they’re going to find out that they’re going to need drugstores and shops and restaurants and everything grows. When faced with unfair practice abroad, we’ve taken tough but targeted action on behalf of the American workers, businesses and factory towns. We know the pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine and inflation they created caused enormous pain and hardship all across America and around the world. And so we took aggressive action that brought down prices, ordered the biggest release of our strategic Petroleum Reserve in our history, reducing the price of gas at the pump here in America. I also challenge the oil and gas companies to take their record profits and invest in more production. Today, American energy production is at record levels, including record oil and gas production. Gas prices are $3 a gallon, which is below the price before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. My Inflation reduction Act took on big pharma and reduced the price of insulin for seniors with diabetes to $35 a month from as much as 400 a month. Inflation Reduction Act also finally gives Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices across the board.

“As of this month, out-of-pocket prescription drug costs that’s already passed will be capped at $2,000 per year no matter how expensive the drugs are. Even those expensive cancer drugs that cost 10, 12, $14,000 a year, no senior will have to pay more than 2000 a year. These and other reforms not only save seniors money, it saves the American taxpayers money. $160 billion will be saved over the next decade because Medicare will no longer have to pay the exorbitant prices that pharmaceutical companies have been charging. And with our historic backing of unions, public support for unions is the highest it’s been in more than half a century, and the labor movement is expanding to new companies and new industries. The middle-out bottom-up playbook is also about asking the very wealthy and most profitable corporations. We want them to do well but begin to pay their fair share in taxes. My predecessor’s tax cut last time he was here not only increased the federal debt by $2 trillion, it overwhelmingly benefited the biggest corporations, delivering tax cuts to the top 1% worth more than 50 times what the middle-class families received.

“And you’ve heard me say it a hundred times, we have over a thousand billionaires in America. They paid an average of 8.2% in federal taxes. Look folks, my approach is leading to better results for everyone. I kept my commitment, that no one earning less than $400,000 a year would pay a single penny more in federal taxes. I fought hard to expand the child tax credit for working families that when they existed cut child poverty nearly in half. I expanded tax credits to make health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans enrolled in the Affordable Care Act. Because of our policy, our policies and confidence of entrepreneurs and our economy, we have also seen 21 million new business applications filed on our administration, the most in any single presidential term on record. And it’s important because every single one of those applications for small businesses is an act of hope, believing in the country. There’s so much more from our playbook, but the bottom line is we’ve come a long way from the crisis we’ve inherited.

“Let me close where I started, with this morning’s jobs report. More than 250,000 jobs in December. In four years, the economy created 16.6 million new jobs, the most in any single presidential term. We’ve created jobs every single month I was in office. During my presidency, we saw the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in the last 50 years, and battling through the worldwide effects of the pandemic, Putin’s war in Ukraine and supply change disruption, inflation rate is down nearly 2%. These are simple, well-established economic benchmarks that measures the strength of any economy, the success and failure of any president’s four years in office. I believe the economy I’m leaving is the best in the world and stronger than ever for all Americans. So I think that’s what we have. We’ll see what the next president does. I want to thank you all. God bless you all, and may God protect our troops.”