On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that a key plank of President Joe Biden’s agenda to lower costs is by “creating incentives to dramatically improve the use of clean energy in the United States” and “over time, this will help lower household energy costs.”
Host Andrea Mitchell asked, “[H]ow can you — I know you’re in Georgia today — help get the message to people that the economy is better and improve it even more, get those grocery prices down, help bring down the prices that people are feeling at their kitchen table?”
Yellen responded, “So, the President has indicated, and I certainly agree, that getting the cost of living down should be our number one economic priority. And he’s proposed many different ways of doing this. But one important way is by lowering energy prices and diminishing their volatility. Right now, when Putin invades Ukraine, or there are supply disruptions in the Middle East, we can see oil and energy costs skyrocketing, harming America’s families. And the Inflation Reduction Act is a comprehensive piece of legislation that’s creating incentives to dramatically improve the use of clean energy in the United States. I’m here in Georgia today to visit a company called Suniva, which manufactures solar cells. And this is, of course, a key input into solar panels. We have been very heavily dependent — overdependent on China for our supplies of these goods. And the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act have incentivized Suniva to reopen their solar cell plant and to manufacture cells in the United States. And, as I said, over time, this will help lower household energy costs. But, in addition, it’s making our supply chains more resilient. And, very importantly, it is creating very good jobs, and jobs, most of which don’t require a college education and in parts of the country that haven’t seen a great deal of investment in recent decades. And Andrea, this is happening all over the country in things related to clean energy, in batteries, electric vehicles, wind. But it’s also happening in semiconductors as a consequence of the CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan bill that was passed two years ago, and, of course, a tremendous number of jobs relating to the bipartisan Infrastructure Act.”
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