Janet Yellen, worried by the specter of inflation, initially urged Biden administration officials to scale back the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan by a third, according to an advance copy of a biography on the Treasury secretary.
“Privately, Yellen agreed with Summers that too much government money was flowing into the economy too quickly,” writes Owen Ullmann, the book’s author and a veteran Washington journalist, referring to former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who severely criticized the size of the aid plan. The book is due out on Sept. 27.
A Treasury spokesperson disputed the claims.
“The Secretary did not urge a smaller package and, as she has said, believes that without the American Rescue Plan, millions of people would have been economically scarred, and the country’s historically fast recovery would have been far slower,” Treasury spokesperson Lily Adams said in response to the book’s claims.
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