The economic data from the last two years demonstrates clearly that policies designed to support those in greatest need ultimately benefit everyone. In his famous sermon The Drum Major Instinct, Reverend King called on us to overcome our instinct to focus on how we or our group can get ahead of others and to instead to work toward collective justice for all of those in need. Today, our politics continue to distract us from the fact that working- and middle-class Americans of all races and creeds still face a set of shared economic challenges. often spoke of the challenges and experiences shared among poor white people and marginalized Black people and of how detractors sought to sow division between them to prevent unified action. In his quest for economic justice, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. All Americans-including rural, white, and other communities-have benefited from the President’s focus on equity. īut an underappreciated aspect of these policies designed to support those often left behind by economic policy is the impact they have on all working-class Americans regardless of race. And the Black and Hispanic supplemental child poverty rates-which account for government benefits-reached their lowest levels since 2009. From 2019 to 2022, median weekly earnings increased 4 percent for Black workers and 2.4 percent for Hispanic workers after accounting for inflation. To name just a few, both Black unemployment and the gap between Black and white unemployment recently reached their lowest levels on record. We have seen historic gains in employment and wages among Black and Hispanic workers, as well as on other key economic metrics. With Juneteenth approaching, this week’s TACRE meeting is an ideal time to take stock of our work to date.Īs I look back at the last two-and-a-half years of the Biden-Harris Administration, I am proud of the way our actions have advanced racial and economic equity, from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) enacted in the early days of the Administration to the ways we have implemented the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) over the past few months.

TACRE is comprised of 25 experts drawn from academia, business, nonprofits, philanthropy, and other fields who help the Treasury Department ensure we are thinking about how our policies impact racial equity and hold us accountable for the commitments we’ve made. This week, the Treasury Department will host the third meeting of the Treasury Advisory Committee on Racial Equity (TACRE).

By: Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo

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