© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen looks on during a U.S. House Committee on Financial Services hearing on the Annual Report of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S. May 12, 2022. Graeme Jennings/
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she never urged for the adoption of a smaller COVID-19 relief package, rebutting a media report in which a biographer was quoted as claiming that she asked officials to scale back the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan by a third.
“I never urged adoption of a smaller American Rescue Plan package, and I believe that ARP played a central role in driving strong growth throughout 2021 and afterwards,” Yellen said in a statement on Saturday.
Bloomberg on Friday quoted an advance copy of a biography on Yellen, written by journalist Owen Ullmann, who said that she was worried that “too much government money was flowing into the economy too quickly.”
