Grassley Questions Treasury Secretary at Finance Hearing on Biden Budget
WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, today questioned Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about Social Security sustainability and inflation at a Finance Committee hearing on President Biden’s FY2024 budget.
As Treasury Secretary, you are a member of Social Security’s Board of Trustees. In both Social Security Trustee reports issued during your tenure, you and the other Trustees recommended that “lawmakers address the projected trust fund shortfalls in a timely way in order to phase in necessary changes gradually and give workers and beneficiaries time to adjust to them.”
President Biden has claimed that his budget reduces the deficits while protecting Social Security. However, the President’s Budget includes no proposal’s to extend the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund. Anyone who know how things get done around here, knows it takes presidential leadership to lead major reforms into law.
As a Social Security Trustee, do you stand by your recommendation that lawmakers act sooner rather than later to shore up the Social Security Trust Fund? When can Congress expect to see the President’s proposal to put Social Security on sound fiscal footing?
It would help if the President would quick demagoguing the Social Security issue the way he has in recent weeks.
In June of 2021, you defended concerns about the President’s spending proposals fueling inflation and interest rate hikes saying:
“If we ended up with a slightly higher interest rate environment it would actually be a plus for society’s point of view and the Fed’s point of view.”
When you made this comment, inflation was 5.4 percent and the federal funds rate was effectively zero. Since that time, inflation hit a 40-year high and the Fed has responded by aggressively hiking interest rates. As a result, families and small businesses are paying the price by way of higher interest costs on home loans and business lines of credit. Moreover, bank failures this past week highlight how fragile our economy is given rising interest rates and decades-high inflation.
Do you still see our inflation driven interest rate hikes as a “plus for society”?
