Janet Yellen, in Final Effort To Burnish Biden’s Legacy, Defends Covid Spending, Takes Jab at Trump Tax Cuts

With the public’s approval of the Biden administration’s economy hitting new lows in the final days of his presidency, the outgoing treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, during her last week in office, launched a final effort to put the gloss on the administration’s legacy. “All policy choices entail tradeoffs, but the Biden administration made sound decisions that set the economy on a strong course,” Ms. Yellen said on Wednesday, speaking before the New York Association for Business Economics. Ms. Yellen doubled down on her defense of the administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, arguing that its stimulus packages saved businesses, maintained employment, and spurred economic growth. She also touted the relative strength of the American economy compared to other advanced economies, echoing the Economist magazine’s line that America is the “envy of the world.” Ms. Yellen also managed to get in a jab at President-elect Trump, warning that the incoming administration’s efforts to extend the 2017 tax cuts could lead to “dire” outcomes, including undermining the Treasury market and the value of the dollar, even prompting a future debt crisis.During Mr. Biden’s time in office — she was Treasury secretary the whole time — the value of the dollar plunged more than 30 percent to barely a 2,700th of an ounce of gold. The value of the dollar is at a record low in terms of the monetary metal.Yet last week, Ms. Yellen cast doubt on the government spending cuts proposed by President-elect Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, saying that “It’s hard to see how the math on that works.” The Biden administration, following up on the more than $3 trillion in Covid-19 spending issued during Trump’s presidency, approved a $1.9 trillion stimulus spending bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, in March of 2021. The measure, which put thousands of dollars directly in the pockets of Americans who had already been accruing pandemic-era saving and unemployment benefits, is credited by economists for fueling the post-pandemic inflation. Stubborn inflation and higher prices have weighed heavily on the American public, and the economic discontent was successfully leveraged by President Trump in his re-election campaign. Mr. Biden, meanwhile, is slated to leave office with the lowest favorability levels of his entire term, with his approval rating on the economy dropping to an all-time low of 33 percent, according to a new CNN poll.Ms. Yellen addressed the inflationary impact of the measure in a rare concession last week, acknowledging for the first time that the stimulus spending may have contributed “a little bit” to inflation.During Wednesday’s speech she further conceded that “it’s true that the prices of many everyday goods soared” in the aftermath. She maintained, however, that the spending helped unemployed Americans get back to work quickly. She called the current strength of the economy “far from inevitable.”

Janet Yellen, in Final Effort To Burnish Biden’s Legacy, Defends Covid Spending, Takes Jab at Trump Tax Cuts

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