Biden withdraws Tanden’s nomination amid turmoil
WASHINGTON >> The White House on Tuesday abandoned its push to install Neera Tanden as the director of President Joe Biden’s budget office after opposition from senators in both parties, making her nomination the first casualty of the evenly split Senate.
In a statement, Biden said that he had accepted Tanden’s request to withdraw from consideration for the post but that he planned to find a place in his administration for her to serve in a different capacity.
“I have accepted Neera Tanden’s request to withdraw her name from nomination for director of the Office of Management and Budget,” he said. “I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel.”
The White House released a letter that Tanden wrote to Biden seeking to end her nomination and acknowledging the political opposition to her serving as the administration’s budget chief. She wrote that 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.”
Tanden, who was a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, had drawn bipartisan criticism for a prolific stream of vitriolic social media posts that lambasted lawmakers in both parties.
During Tanden’s confirmation hearings, senators grilled her about her social media posts and her decision to delete more than 1,000 Twitter comments before appearing on Capitol Hill.
Tanden also faced scrutiny for corporate donations she had secured while she was in charge of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
In the past 10 days, her nomination had teetered on the brink of collapse as centrists — first Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., then Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, both Republicans — announced they would not back her.
White House officials had remained adamant in their support for Tanden, who would have become the first woman of color to lead the agency. But the administration ultimately concluded that Tanden could not be confirmed. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, had declined to address questions about fallback options.