WASHINGTON (NewsNation Now) — Women now hold many of the jobs controlling the U.S. economy —the world’s largest — and they’re trying to fix it, overcoming continuing pandemic challenges.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and trade czar Katherine Tai hold top jobs in President Joe Biden’s administration and many of his economic advisers also are women, as are nearly 48% of his confirmed cabinet-level officials.
This sea change may already be affecting economic policy — a new $2.3 trillion spending plan introduced by Biden last week includes $400 billion to fund the “care economy,” supporting home- and community-based jobs taking care of kids and seniors, work normally done by women that has mostly gone unacknowledged in years past. The plan also has hundreds of billions of dollars more to fix racial and rural-urban inequalities that were created in part by past economic, trade and labor policies.
Republicans have criticized Biden’s infrastructure package — his second major legislative initiative — as too big and too costly for them to support. Adding it’s riddled with liberal spending priorities, and want to strip out funding for home- and community-based jobs.
“It seems like President Biden has an insatiable appetite to spend more money and raise people’s taxes,” said Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the GOP whip, in an interview, and if approved, the new spending and taxes would “start having a negative impact on the economy, which we’re very concerned about.”
Top White House economist Cecilia Rouse on Tuesday defended the plan as legitimate infrastructure investment and key to addressing persistent economic inequities.
