Key senators oppose Biden budget pick, now seen at risk
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s nomination of Neera Tanden to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget was thrown further into doubt Monday as moderate Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah said they would vote against confirming her.
On Friday, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia became the first Democratic lawmaker to oppose the confirmation of Tanden, who would be the first woman of color to lead the agency. With doubts growing about Tanden’s chances for confirmation, the White House called her “an accomplished policy expert,” and Biden said he was sticking with her.
Collins, though, said Monday that Tanden has “neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency,” which heads efforts to ensure an administration’s priorities are reflected in legislation and regulations. Collins blamed Tanden’s past actions and said they “demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend.”
Romney will also oppose Tanden, a spokesperson confirmed, because of her rhetoric on social media.
During her confirmation hearings, Tanden apologized for her prolific attacks against top Republicans on social media. Tanden is a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and served as president of the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.
With the Senate evenly divided between 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, and with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaking vote, losing Manchin means Tanden would need support from at least one Republican to win confirmation.
The Senate Budget Committee is scheduled to vote on Tanden’s nomination this week. It’s the first real test that Biden has faced on a nomination, with most of his picks for Cabinet positions sailing through the chamber with bipartisan support.
Collins criticized Tanden for deleting tweets in the days before her nomination was announced and said that “raises concerns about her commitment to transparency.”
She said Congress “has to be able to trust the OMB director to make countless decisions in an impartial manner, carrying out the letter of the law and congressional intent.”
“The OMB needs steady, experienced, responsive leadership,” Collins said in a statement. “I will vote against confirming Ms. Tanden.”
Manchin said bipartisanship is “more important than ever” as the nation faces many crises and suggested Tanden was overtly partisan.
“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 in a statement.
Tanden acknowledged spending “many months” removing past Twitter posts, saying, “I deleted tweets because I regretted them.”
Republican senators have griped about Tanden’s “harsh criticism” and “personal attacks” in her tweets, such as calling Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas “a fraud” and saying “vampires have more heart” than Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
The Republican senators’ complaints about Tanden’s tweets, though, seemed to ignore the hypocrisy of criticizing her for her social media content after spending four years largely failing to condemn the toxic tweets of former President Donald Trump, who was recently banned from Twitter.
When veteran producer Bill Mechanic begins filming his latest movie, “The Divide,” in Australia later this year, he knows he will have to charter a private jet to fly out his lead actor.
Under normal circumstances, that would be out of the question. Typically, for a limited budget indie feature, all the cast and crew — even the stars — fly commercial, which is substantially cheaper.
But the Oscar-nominated producer is willing to pay the extra costs to fly the actor (whom he declined to identify) from Los Angeles to reduce the risk of a COVID-19 outbreak on set.
“That becomes, even on a tight budget, something you don’t fight, since if your stars tested positive, then you’d be shut down,” said Mechanic, a former Fox and Disney executive who produced the movies “Hacksaw Ridge” and “Coraline.” “There’s more money lost ... not being smart. Penny-wise, pound-foolish sort of thing.”
It’s not only A-list celebrities who are demanding private flights. Increasingly, requests for use of such perks is coming from a wider group of cast and crew nervous about getting infected with COVID-19 while traveling on commercial flights, or because direct routes have been suspended as a result of the pandemic-related collapse in travel.
Some studios and producers have balked at the demands for private jet travel at a time when many are facing additional financial pressure brought on by new safety measures intended to prevent coronavirus outbreaks.
But, like Mechanic, many are willing to compromise because of the extraordinary circumstances caused by the health crisis.
“If a studio is making a star or makeup artist get to a certain place that requires air travel and the person wants to go, the financier-producer will make whatever accommodation they feel is appropriate. Then it becomes a negotiation,” said Los Angeles-based veteran talent manager Larry Thompson, whose clients include William Shatner.
The willingness by studios to make accommodations is a notable change, he said.
“‘There’s not enough money’ — you hear that on every movie,” he said. “You’re not hearing it now.”
Some businesses have profited from the growing popularity of private jet travel.
“We initially lost a lot of business due to cancellations but ended up booking more than twice as many flights in 2020,” said Richard Zaher, chief executive and founder of Paramount Business Jets, a Leesburg, Virginia -based charter broker that arranges private jet flights, including out of Los Angeles.
Zaher estimates that sales more than doubled over the last year, to more than $25.5 million in 2020. He attributes at least some of that to entrepreneurs, corporations and wealthy individuals who’d never flown privately before but now do so because of the pandemic.
Zaher says the entertainment industry accounts for a small but growing share of his sales.
At the end of December, a production company filming a Super Bowl commercial decided to charter a private plane to transport the crew and stars to Milwaukee and Green Bay, Wisconsin, Zaher said.
“People in production houses are also thinking about safety of their staff, just like everyone else, so yes, we are definitely seeing an increase in demand in that regard,” Zaher said.
The hourly cost of renting a private jet varies from $2,000 to $10,000, he said.
Some Hollywood studios own or lease their own jets, which are also used by executives.
Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives have made significant progress in setting the stage for Pennsylvanians to take control of our needed economic recovery. And we will continue to advance an aggressive, yet practical, forward-thinking agenda to prime the commonwealth for its return to normal.
Our strategy has been simple: Provide short-term relief while working toward long-term solutions.
Seeing the need for short-term relief, the Republican-controlled legislature recently appropriated nearly $1 billion in federal and state aid to small busi- nesses, families and the hospitality industry affected by the economic restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
This short-term economic stimulus will help get Pennsylvania through what we hope are the last months of this pandemic.
But short-term relief is not enough. Pennsylvanians need long-term solutions. Without them, there is no clear path forward out of this pandemic.
We know that no long-term recovery will be possible without Pennsylvanians having certainty their health will be protected. The only way we get there is through rapid and efficient vaccine deployment.
Yet, now that a vaccine has arrived, Pennsylvania has floundered in getting the supply we have out to those who need it the most.
It is clear the Department of Health was flat-out unprepared to deploy the vaccine supply we have been given, and millions of Pennsylvanians looking
to protect themselves from the COVID-19 virus have gone wanting.
Knowing that correcting this failure is the surest way to get back to normal, the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a legislative solution to use the Pennsylvania National Guard to develop vaccine deployment infrastructure to help get future doses into the arms of Pennsylvanians.
Since we expect our vaccine supply from the federal government to increase and a correlating need to ramp up distribution as we get closer to spring and summer, this development is crucial to better vaccine deployment going forward.
Once health care assurances are provided, Pennsylvania will need an economic boost that can be sustained with new jobs and new opportunities.
That effort started in earnest last month with the formation of a House Republican Economic Recovery Task Force, whose primary objective is to develop proposals to help jump-start Pennsylvania’s economic recovery.
The task force is examining creative solutions, legislative proposals, opportunities for tax relief and regulatory changes to put Pennsylvania on a path to real recovery and then sustainable, long-term growth.
The best recovery legislation can only be effective if Pennsylvanians have confidence their jobs will not be taken away, their businesses will not be shut down and their livelihoods will not be taken away again by executive fiat.
Seeing the devastating effects of the governor’s unilateral, emergency authority over the past year, it became readily apparent the only way to make sure Pennsylvanians could return to normal on their own terms was to take the people’s voice back and rein in this emergency power.
To accomplish this, we advanced a constitutional amendment to ensure the people, speaking through their representatives in the General Assembly, have a say in whether to extend any state of emergency and the extreme executive authority attached to it.
That amendment was supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, and soon will be before you, the voters. You will get to decide whether to take your power back and ensure that no Pennsylvania governor obtains unchecked power during an emergency.
House Republicans believe no one person should stand in the way of a reasonable and bipartisan approach to emergency management and recovery.
Despite the good things being done in the Legislature, we know our work will not be done until each Pennsylvanian finds their way out of this unprecedented time and can feel safe in their future and ability to support themselves and their families.
State Rep. Kerry Benninghoff is the majority leader of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. He has represented portions of Centre and Mifflin counties since 1997.