[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 14 (Monday, January 25, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S119-S120]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Nomination of Janet Louise Yellen

  Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, it is a pleasure tonight to be making the 
case for Janet Yellen, former Chair of the Federal Reserve, to be the 
next Secretary of the Treasury. It is an awfully easy case to make.
  Chair Janet Yellen deserves to be in the Senate confirmation hall of 
fame. She has already been confirmed four times for key economic 
positions. Tonight, the Senate can deliver an especially important 
economic judgment: Confirm Janet Yellen a fifth time and know that she 
will work with every single one of us to get our workers, our small 
businesses, and all Americans, from sea to shining sea, back on solid 
economic footing.
  Tonight, I am going to spend just a few minutes discussing several 
important matters we learned from Chair Yellen's confirmation hearing. 
First, Chair Yellen is an exceptional economist who has a rare gift. 
She can take complicated economic theories and put them into 
understandable language, all while showing a real heart for the 
millions of Americans who are hurting through no fault of their own.
  I asked Chair Yellen at her confirmation hearing: What will give 
Americans the most bang for the economic recovery buck? And Chair 
Yellen simply walked through the priorities, particularly going to bat 
for our small businesses. I come from a State where we have only a 
handful of big businesses. We are an overwhelmingly small business 
State. At her confirmation hearing, she spoke clearly about those small 
business needs, and she talked about the concerns she has for 
innovative and important approaches to expanding unemployment benefits 
to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our people. She also 
focused on reducing hunger and approaches that will help stretch anti-
hunger dollars
  Second, Chair Yellen knows that it would be a big mistake for the 
Congress to go small on economic relief. She is acutely aware of what 
happened in 2009, when the government took its foot off the economic 
gas pedal too

[[Page S120]]

soon, and recovery was compromised as a result. She also understands 
that emergency economic relief, like unemployment compensation, needs 
to last as long as the emergency. It cannot be tied to arbitrary 
expiration dates, where potential political agendas come before human 
needs. There is a reason why the Finance Committee approved her 
nomination unanimously on Friday morning. I touched on some of those 
factors, and I am going to amplify a little bit.
  For example, nobody deserves more credit than Chair Yellen for the 
longest economic expansion in American history. It lasted until the 
pandemic hit. As Federal Reserve Chair, she led an important change to 
the status quo in economic policy. Previously, there had been too great 
a focus on inflation and deficit. Chair Yellen said: Let's zero in more 
on unemployment, income, and inequality, and she believed that the 
economy could run a bit hotter. The record shows that the Yellen 
approach was right on. Unemployment went down, wages went up, and a lot 
of people were better off than they were before. That is exactly the 
kind of thinking America needs again because confronting the COVID 
economy is hammering working families, in particular. Again, another 
clear reason why Janet Yellen is the right pick to be the next Treasury 
Secretary.
  The most recent economic data shows that 1.4 million people 
nationwide had filed new claims for unemployment benefits in the last 
full week of the previous administration. So it is not hard to figure 
out what that means. It is an economic catastrophe. It is more than 
twice the highest figure from any single week in the great recession. 
That means 1.4 million people--so, so many working families--are 
suddenly walking on an economic tightrope every single day, balancing 
the food cost against the fuel cost, the fuel cost against the rent 
bill, worried about finding a new job, getting a badly needed shift at 
work, falling behind on rent or the mortgage, feeding their kids, 
paying the electric bill, paying medical bills--worried that the 
economy is headed in reverse and worried about whether the Congress 
will be gridlocked.
  The country lost 140,000 jobs last month. My home State lost more 
than 25,000, in part because the Senate, in something that just defied 
common sense, waited around for the recovery to peter out before 
passing any more relief. Thousands and thousands of neighborhood 
restaurants and bars and mom-and-pop businesses have been shuttered. 
Nearly 11 million workers are out of a job. Another 4 million Americans 
have fallen out of the labor force entirely since this time last year. 
Unless the Congress acts boldly and quickly with more relief, the 
damage from the COVID economic crash will long outlast the pandemic 
itself. That must not be allowed to happen.
  The key, of course, is for the Senate to get down to work, and one of 
the best ways you can do it is to confirm someone who is eminently 
qualified, Chair Janet Yellen, to be Treasury Secretary.
  As I touched on, we are looking at working with her on a host of key 
economic issues. As I have said as the new chair of the Finance 
Committee, my first priority will be to make sure that this Congress 
does not commit again the mistake of 2009.
  In 2009, the sense was, well, maybe we are getting there on economic 
recovery. We will be able to come back later if maybe we didn't do 
enough. Well, we all know that a missed opportunity is a missed 
opportunity, and, in 2009, the Congress said, All right. We can take 
our foot off the gas now. It was too early, and there wasn't any next 
effort to make up for the damage. I am committed to making sure that 
doesn't happen again. Suffice it to say, it took 7\1/2\ years for the 
unemployment rate in Oregon to return to its prerecession levels.
  This time around, the Congress has been warned. The warning I am 
giving about making sure that Congress doesn't take its foot off the 
economic relief pedal too soon is not the first warning. Chair Powell, 
for example, made it clear that the biggest danger lies in not doing 
enough.
  Increasing relief checks to $2,000 is key. The Congress needs to 
increase and extend unemployment benefits for the entirety of the COVID 
crisis, and you do that by, in effect, tying the benefits to the real 
world, to economic conditions on the ground. That has been my proposal 
for some time. Other colleagues have long advanced similar ideas. It is 
not a revolutionary proposition to say that emergency relief should 
last as long as the emergency. Simply stated. And it should not be held 
hostage by the arbitrary political agendas of Members of Congress.
  If you don't do it, dysfunction and gridlock in Congress creates 
still more havoc for people who have done nothing wrong and just need 
help. A decade ago, that help went away too quickly because benefits 
expired arbitrarily, and Congress did not keep up with extensions. The 
Congress needs to do better, and I believe that should include 
important upgrades as well to unemployment insurance, which was created 
in the last century. I don't think it is too much to say we at least 
bring this critical safety net program into the relevant century.
  Now, sometimes these programs look a little rusty in the modern 
economy. Sometimes it is because of outright sabotage. But workers 
suffer, particularly Black and Hispanic workers. So there are steps 
that need to be taken, in addition to modernizing the benefits, 
increasing base benefits, bringing all workers into the system, and 
ensuring it can hold up in a crisis.
  Finally, Chair Yellen had some important comments on fixing America's 
broken Tax Code. I will tell you, Madam President, I start with the 
proposition that a nurse who is treating COVID patients and paying 
taxes with every single paycheck should not find themselves in a 
disadvantaged position when compared to billionaires who, in effect, do 
no such thing and can postpone and postpone and postpone paying their 
taxes.
  Now, there is a lot of work we need to do to repair the 2017 bill. 
The previous administration actually increased the incentives for 
corporations to ship jobs overseas. I want to fix that mistake. I want 
to work with Secretary Yellen on energy policy because so much of it 
deals with the Tax Code.
  Suffice it to say, those are just some of the challenges Chair Yellen 
will face when, I believe, she is confirmed tonight as Treasury 
Secretary. She is supremely qualified--a member, in my view, of the 
Senate Confirmation hall of fame--and a proven economic policymaker.
  Finally, I say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, it is 
long past time to have a woman lead the U.S. Treasury Department. Chair 
Yellen has my full support.
  As colleagues come for this vote--and it is a significant economic 
policy vote, make no mistake about that--I would just ask my colleagues 
to reflect on the fact that Chair Yellen was approved by the Finance 
Committee 26 to nothing. Sometimes I say about this place--I have 
questions about whether you can get a simple decision like ordering a 
sandwich decided on a 26-to-nothing. She was approved unanimously 
because she gives public service a good name.
  I urge my colleagues to support Janet Yellen for Secretary of the 
Treasury when we vote in just a few minutes.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.