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WASHINGTON — Treasury secretary nominee Janet Yellen urged Congress to “go big” and pass President-elect Joe Biden’s massive $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package in opening her Senate confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

“When economists look back on the pandemic, I expect they’ll conclude that Congress’ actions averted a lot of suffering,” Yellen told the Senate Finance Committee.

“Over the next few months, we’re going to need more aid to distribute the vaccine, to reopen schools, to help states keep firefighters and teachers on the job,” she continued.

“We’ll need more funding to make unemployment insurance checks still go out and help families who are at risk of going hungry or losing the roof over their heads,” she went on.

Yellen, 74, chaired the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018 and was the first woman to hold that role.

If confirmed, the Brooklyn-born economist would again be the first woman to lead the treasury and the first person ever to hold the top three economic positions in American government.

But she would also take over the Treasury Department at a time of great turmoil.

Yellen addressed this directly in her speech when she said low interest rates, currently at 1 percent, meant it would be foolish not to borrow.

“Neither the president-elect, nor I, propose this relief package without an appreciation for the country’s debt burden, but right now, with interest rates at historic lows, the smartest thing we can do is act big,” Yellen said.

Republicans on the committee said they were looking forward to working with Yellen but were highly critical of Biden’s spending plan. 

“The ink is barely dry on the second largest stimulus package in American history, nearly a trillion dollars after nearly $3 trillion earlier this year, and we’re looking at another spending blowout,” GOP Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said.

“The only organizing principle that I can discern is it seems to spend as much money as possible seemingly for the sake of spending it,” Toomey went on, saying that the stimulus checks were not targeted and made “absolutely no sense.”

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina also told Yellen he believed Biden’s push to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 would cost millions of jobs and was “the last thing this economy needs.”

“It would significantly devastate the opportunity to develop new jobs in rural America, in rural South Carolina, as well as for those minorities and women coming into the workforce,” Scott said.

Yellen pushed back on this characterization and said a large body of economic literature showed that states which raised their minimum wage saw minimal job losses.

“Millions of American workers are putting their lives on the line to keep their community functioning, and sometimes even working multiple jobs, aren’t earning enough to put food on the table and a roof over their heads,” she told Scott.

A centrist who in 2015 raised interest rates for the first time in a decade, Yellen displayed a hawkish streak during Tuesday’s hearing, assuring lawmakers that Biden would keep some of Trump’s 2016 tax reforms and agreed it was “essential” the nation be put on a sustainable debt path.

The economist also agreed that China needed to be brought to heel, echoing concerns from the Trump administration about the nation’s predatory trade practices.

“We need to take on China’s abusive unfair and illegal practices,” Yellen said. 

“China is undercutting American companies by dumping products, erecting trade barriers and giving illegal subsidies to corporations. It’s been stealing intellectual property and engaging in practices that give it enough unfair technological advantage,” she went on. 

“These practices, including China’s low labor and environmental standards, are practices that we are prepared to use the full array of tools to address.”

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