Across the street from the White House in Washington D.C., a 10-foot-high bronze sculpture of a man stands atop a granite plinth. The tousled jabot at his throat appears to have been stirred by a breeze coming up off of the Potomac. The figure holds a long coat bunched under one arm, and a tricorn hat in his other hand – it almost looks as if he’s leaving the office after a long day’s work. Looming behind him, the United States Department of the Treasury covers a block and a half, an imposing building that may look vaguely familiar – it’s the building featured on the back of the U.S. ten-dollar bill.
And the bronze figure? It’s a heroic representation of the fellow who also is featured on the front of the ten-dollar bill: Alexander Hamilton, lately of Broadway fame, but to be remembered also as the nation’s first Treasury Secretary.
The inscription that is carved into the statue’s granite base would have you believe that Hamilton possessed something akin to supernatural powers: “He smote the rock of the national resources and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the public credit and it sprang upon its feet.”
Surely all of Hamilton’s successors at Treasury might have wished to be remembered so favorably.
But the fact of the matter is, this federal Department has a tough portfolio to manage. It is charged with overseeing the United States’ finances and resources, promoting economic growth and stability both at home and abroad, and combating threats to the integrity of the American financial system. And juggling all of those sometimes conflicting responsibilities at once is never likely to make everyone happy at the same time.
Fast forward to now, April 2021, as the entire world struggles to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, in accordance with President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the Treasury Department and one of the agencies it oversees, the Internal Revenue Service, started sending out more than 242 billion dollars’ worth of stimulus checks. It was the largest assistance effort to Americans since the Great Depression. This month (and into May, due to a recently announced deadline extension) they’re dealing with the annual influx of income
tax returns.
Presiding over all of this, just weeks after being sworn in as the nation’s 78th Secretary of the Treasury, is Janet Yellen.
She’s the first woman ever to serve in the post since it was established 232 years ago by President George Washington. But this isn’t the first time Yellen has shattered the glass ceiling. After earning her PhD from Yale and joining the faculty of UC-Berkeley as a professor of economics, she was tapped in 1994 by President Bill Clinton to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. When he promoted her to Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers three years later, she became the first woman ever named to that position. And in 2014 she achieved another first for women when she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the nation’s top central banker, chair of the Federal Reserve.
Building Back Better: the U.S. Treasury Department
Barbara Lloyd McMichael’s monthly column examines the history of key government agencies and how they are “Building Back Better” under the Biden Administration.
by Barbara Lloyd McMichael
Yellen meets with Black Chambers of Commerce