Vice President Kamala Harris participates in a swearing-in ceremony with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Yellen's husband George Akerlof, Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021, at the White House in Washington.
“In addition to the pandemic, the country is also facing a climate crisis, a crisis of systemic racism and an economic crisis that has been building for fifty years,” Yellen said in her message.
Yellen became the third of Biden's Cabinet nominees to win Senate approval on a vote of 84-15 late Monday.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Yellen that Biden’s plan represented a “laundry list of liberal structural economic reforms.”As Treasury secretary, Yellen, 74, will occupy a pivotal role in shaping and directing Biden’s economic policies.
Since leaving the Fed, Yellen has been a distinguished fellow in residence at the Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington think tank.