The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Nomination of Janet Louise Yellen (Executive Session)” mentioning Ron Wyden was published in the Senate section on pages S119-S120 on Jan. 25.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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 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.
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