BIDEN ABANDONS TANDEN NOMINATION
She faced bipartisan opposition in effort to be budget director
The White House on Tuesday abandoned its push to install Neera Tanden as the director of President Joe Biden’s budget office after it became clear that she could not overcome congressional opposition in both parties, making her nomination the first casualty of the evenly split Senate.
In a statement, Biden said that Tanden had requested that her nomination for director of the Office of Management and Budget be withdrawn and that, while he agreed to do so, he planned to find a place in his administration for her to serve in a different capacity.
“I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel,” he wrote. “I look forward to having her serve in a role in my administration. She will bring valuable perspective and insight to our work.”
Tanden, who was a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, had drawn bipartisan criticism for a prolific stream of social media posts that criticized lawmakers in both parties, often in vitriolic terms, and for her work at a liberal research group, the Center for American Progress.
Biden selected her to direct the budget office before Democrats had won control of the Senate, surprising lawmakers and aides in both parties.
The pick also surprised many of the economic aides in Biden’s inner circle, which Tanden had not been a part of, who saw her as more publicly combative and less bipartisan than most of Biden’s other nominees.
In a letter released Tuesday by the White House, Tanden asked Biden to end her nomination, acknowledging the political opposition to her serving as the administration’s budget chief.
“Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities,” she wrote.
A senior administration official said Tuesday night that Biden and Tanden had agreed to give up on the nomination after Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, made clear to the White House earlier in the day that she would not vote for her.
The official said it was a “mutual understanding” that without Murkowski’s support, and with the public opposition to Tanden’s confirmation from Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., there was no longer a path forward in the Senate, which is divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.
But asked Tuesday evening on Capitol Hill if she had told anyone in the White House that she would vote against the nomination, Murkowski said she had not. “No, I never did,” she said. “They never asked.”
While Tanden’s social media posts were often aggressive, White House officials believed Republican senators would not scuttle a nomination over Twitter behavior after years of standing behind President Donald Trump, who excoriated Republicans and Democrats alike in frequent Twitter rants.
The officials also thought senators would be drawn to the groundbreaking nature of Tanden’s nomination — she would have been the first
Indian American to lead the budget office and had a personal story of being raised by a single mother who at times relied on government assistance to get by.
Tanden and a variety of groups supporting her were able to secure several highprofile endorsements, including one from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But the White House underestimated what would become bipartisan consternation over Tanden’s posts, particularly given Biden’s repeated calls for “unity” after four years of divisive rhetoric from Trump.
During two confirmation hearings, senators in both parties grilled Tanden about her social media posts and her decision to delete more than 1,000 tweets after the election in November.
Among those who questioned her social media comments was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., chair of the Budget Committee, who singled out Tanden’s “vicious attacks” on him and the staff that supported his 2016 presidential campaign.
She apologized, but it was clear that some senators were not inclined to accept it. That included Manchin, whose decision last month to oppose her nomination dealt a crucial blow to her chances of confirmation.
“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin said at the time.
“For this reason, I cannot support her nomination,” he concluded.