House expected to pass COVID relief bill next week

Biden spoke Wednesday with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, according to the White House.

"The President affirmed his personal history of steadfast commitment to Israel’s security and conveyed his intent to strengthen all aspects of the U.S.-Israel partnership, including our strong defense cooperation," according to a readout from the White House. "Together, the leaders discussed the importance of continued close consultation on regional security issues, including Iran. The President emphasized U.S. support for the recent normalization of relations between Israel and countries in the Arab and Muslim world. He underscored the importance of working to advance peace throughout the region, including between Israelis and Palestinians. Together, they affirmed their shared interest in continued strategic cooperation to confront the many challenges facing the region."

Biden and Harris met with labor leaders in the Oval Office Wednesday afternoon, where Biden discussed his commitment to the middle class.

"The middle class built this country and labor built the middle class," Biden said. "We have an amazing opportunity to create progress and good jobs, to rebuild infrastructure in a way that has to be done."

He also took two questions from reporters, one of them about what he learned from taking his pitch for COVID-19 relief on the road. He said he learned that people like everything in the plan, reiterating, "not a joke, everything that’s in the plan."

"And it's not about the money. It's about, in order to do everything from open schools as we should, to make sure that we're generating income for people who are in real trouble. It's about how much it costs," Biden said.
"The federal government has to chip in, make sure we get this done."

On Thursday, the administration will continue its push when Harris hosts a roundtable discussion with "women leaders in Congress and women leaders of advocacy organizations" about the importance of COVID-19 relief for women. Biden will take his second presidential trip, this one to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to visit a Pfizer vaccine manufacturing plant and deliver remarks.

-ABC News' Sarah Kolinovsky and Mary Bruce

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told ABC News' Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce at a Wednesday afternoon briefing that the White House does not yet have a timeline for a return to normalcy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We want to be straight with the American public, though," Psaki said. "We are not in a place where we can predict exactly when everybody will feel normal again.”

Bruce noted White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci had suggested a sense of normalcy could come in the fall but his estimate has been sliding back to early next year, while Biden cited Christmas during a town hall in Madison, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night.

“Even though we will have enough doses for every person in this country, as you all know, because we've talked about it in here, vaccine hesitancy remains a challenge. We need to ensure that everybody who can get a dose is getting a dose. We’ll also need to be masking for some time. We will also need to be still taking social distancing measures. And I think the president wants things to return to normal, as we all do. But we don't know at this point what that timeline is going to look like,” Psaki said.

Psaki also tried to clarify mixed messages about whether the White House takes the position that teachers must be vaccinated before returning to in-person instruction, saying multiple times the White House does, in fact, agree with the CDC guidelines that vaccinations are not a prerequisite for teachers to come back to classrooms -- but stressing that they should be prioritized.

Bruce asked Psaki whether the White House is urging states to put teachers at the front of the line. 

“Absolutely, it's something he said in a nationally televised town hall meeting last night and something that he will continue to communicate at every opportunity. And I think what I was conveying, just for full clarity, is that it’s a recommendation, it’s a number, one of many mitigation steps, but the CDC guidelines are guidelines. They're not requirements. At the same time the president, and the vice president, they believe teachers should be prioritized, and in many states, they are,” Psaki said.

Another reporter then asked Psaki whether the federal government can mandate teachers get priority for vaccines that the federal government is distributing to the states.

“That’s not how the process has worked and I don't anticipate that's how it will be moving forward,” Psaki said.

-ABC News' Sarah Kolinovsky

Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies, gave an update during Tuesday's White House press briefing on the SolarWinds hack, saying those responsible were “likely of Russian origin,” that it was “launched from inside the United States” and that it could take “several months” to complete the investigation.

She said that as of Wednesday, "nine federal agencies and about 100 private sector companies were compromised.” 

“The techniques that were used lead us to believe that any files or emails on a compromised network were likely to be compromised…The actor was a sophisticated, advanced persistent threat. Advanced, because the level of knowledge they showed about the technology and the way they compromised it truly was sophisticated. Persistent, they focused on the identity part of the network, which is the hardest to clean up." Neuberger said. "And threat, the scope and scale to networks, to information makes this more than an isolated case of espionage.” 

Neuberger said that this was a “sophisticated actor” who is believed to have taken “months to plan and execute” the attack.

When asked by ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce if there is a price tag to the total cost of damage to the U.S. government, Neuberger broke it down into two parts: investments in infrastructure and the “scale of the information that was potentially compromised.”

“One is it's really highlighted the investments we need to make in cybersecurity to have the visibility to block these attacks in the future. And then the second is the scale of the information that was potentially compromised and the impact of how that information could be used in the hands of a malicious actor. So it's -- there's certainly a cost with regard to dollars," Neuberger said. "It's also a cost with regard to national security, and we're bounding and understanding both.”

Bruce also asked if it could potentially take years to try to secure some networks going forward, but Neuberger was quick to say “we certainly don’t have years.”

“It's wise when planning in cybersecurity to consider the worst case, particularly when you're dealing with such a sophisticated attacker in that way, so we know we don't have years, and the remediation, the fix and cleanup work is underway already," Neuberger said. "And we'll be doing it in a careful way to ensure that we lock down layer by layer, but we know it's going to be a lot shorter than that.”

-ABC News' Justin Gomez