Yellen says train, local support strengthened U.S. cities’ COVID-19 responses

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appears to be like to be like on all via the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee listening to to appear at the FY22 funds query for the Treasury Department on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S., June 23, 2021. Greg Nash/Pool by REUT

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The $350 billion in coronavirus relief support for train and local governments has allowed U.S. cities to reply sooner and stronger to an ever changing COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged on Wednesday.

Yellen told a assembly of the U.S. Convention of Mayors that the response by train and local governments is helping to blunt the affect of the extremely-contagious Omicron coronavirus variant.

“Omicron has supplied a bid and will seemingly affect about a of the recommendations in the arriving months, but I am confident it’ll now not derail what has been one amongst the strongest periods of business enhance in a century,” Yellen acknowledged.

She acknowledged that the $350 billion Recount and Local Fiscal Restoration Fund, which enabled cities to be versatile in how they aided their populations, had led them to be “unprecedented readier to reply.”

“In need to 1 burst of cash that would possibly simplest be spent in certain ways, it known as for sustained funding, and our Treasury personnel has labored onerous so that you can also command the cash as flexibly as likely,” Yellen added.

She cited several examples of local uses of the funds, from $1,000 signing bonuses for new lecturers at child-care facilities in Columbus, Ohio, to Hawaii’s circulate to reverse its map to furlough 10,000 train workers.

Minnesota has licensed greater than $80 million in funds from the program for effectively being desires, starting from fleet COVID-19 checks to emergency surge staffing in hospitals, while St. Louis extinct $58 million from its allocation to spare residents from evictions and homelessness, supplementing condominium assistance funds, she acknowledged.

Yellen added that funding from the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Notion stimulus kit allowed cities to circulate from combating fires to “birth building a greater put up-COVID world.”

The Treasury chief struck an optimistic tone on the White Home’s sweeping Originate Help Better social and climate spending invoice, no topic contentious congressional negotiations clouding its future.

“While we don’t know the closing construct it’ll retract, it’ll revolutionize how we devour young of us on this country, make investments in climate alternate, and overhaul the world tax map to make certain corporations pay their stunning share,” Yellen acknowledged.

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