Statements & Remarks

Statement by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen on the President’s Jobs Plan

WASHINGTON –For the past 40 years, the federal government has gradually shrunk its investment in public goods: schools, infrastructure, and research into new technologies. This slow decline has undermined broad-based growth. It has weighed-down productivity and curtailed our ability to respond to our nation’s most pressing challenges, including the threat of climate change.

The President’s Jobs Plan unwinds these troubling trends, while also making our economy far more competitive on the world stage.

The plan revamps a flawed corporate tax code that incentivizes off-shoring and, instead, rewards companies that invest in America’s workers. It ends the global race to the bottom for lower and lower tax rates, something that will stop corporations from shifting their profits into tax havens abroad. It also pays, over the next 15 years, for projects and investments that will build the planet’s most state-of-the-art infrastructure and make America’s workers the most highly-skilled in the world.

In the end, it might be that this bill makes 80 years of history: It begins to fix the structural problems that have plagued our economy for the past four decades, and set us up for success over the next four.

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