Yellen says current US economic growth ‘vindicates’ Biden’s COVID-19 pandemic stimulus spending

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is pushing back against Republican criticism of the Democrats’ big coronavirus pandemic response package and making an election year pitch that the current state of the U.S. “vindicates” the steps taken in 2021 to “get our economy back on track.”

With falling inflation, unemployment at 3.7% and the U.S. apparently defying predictions of a recession, Yellen was set to defend the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C.

The stimulus package, which was passed into law without a Republican vote, is regularly cited by Republicans as the cause for two years of accelerating price spikes that hurt millions of American households.

“Many had argued that this Rescue Plan wasn’t needed. But I believe seeing where we are today vindicates the approach we took,” Yellen said in the prepared remarks. “President Biden and I believed that the most dangerous risk was in going too small.”

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