Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned on Thursday that her agency lacked sufficient resources to oversee an economic recovery that still has “a long road ahead” and called on Congress to provide her with more funds to oversee a sprawling set of relief programs. In testimony before a House appropriations subcommittee, Ms. Yellen expressed confidence that the end of the pandemic recession was in sight, but said that the Treasury Department is facing an overwhelming task in disbursing hundreds of billions of dollars of relief money with the same budget that it had a decade ago. The Treasury Department has been central to the federal government’s response to the health crisis, funneling stimulus payments and aid to millions of Americans, states, cities and businesses. “Our team has done valiant work implementing these programs with the resources at our disposal,” Ms. Yellen said in prepared remarks. “But we cannot continue to be good stewards of this recovery — and tackle the new bodies of work that Congress assigns to us in the years beyond — with a budget that was designed for 2010.”The call for more funding comes as the Biden administration will formally propose a $6 trillion budget on Friday.

Source: New York Times May 27, 2021 15:00 UTC