Yellen: ‘Many’ ‘Struggling’ to Cover ‘Necessities’ Because of Prices Increasing ‘Over Decades’

During an interview aired on Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen responded to a question on negative perceptions of the economy among Americans by saying that “many American households are really struggling to cover some of the basic necessities of life, and that ranges from health care, to housing, to child care, to education. And these costs have gone up, frankly, over decades now, and are extremely burdensome.”

Host Neil Cavuto asked, “[T]he administration has pointed consistently to improving economic numbers, and indeed, they have improved, and inflation has come down from its worst levels. But when he tells the American people that, they don’t feel it, they don’t agree with that, they still don’t like inflation, they don’t like what they’re seeing at the grocery store. Are you troubled by that? That some improvement you’ve seen — and the numbers are real, they do show it, people aren’t feeling it, and they don’t like the way the president seems to lecture them that it’s not that bad. What do you say?”

Yellen answered, “Well, the president has recognized, as I have, that Americans, many American households are really struggling to cover some of the basic necessities of life, and that ranges from health care, to housing, to child care, to education. And these costs have gone up, frankly, over decades now, and are extremely burdensome. And the president has put forward an affordability agenda that’s heavily focused on bringing down these costs, putting in place policies like controlling the cost of insulin, bringing down prescription drug prices, making sure that health care is affordable, lowering energy prices for households, programs that will address the high cost of living, make child care more affordable, programs that will help households meet these very burdensome expenses that are really of concern to them.”

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