Personnel office nomination in slow lane
GOP targeting Biden’s pick over support of critical race theory, abortion rights
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans are blocking a quick confirmation for President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the federal personnel agency, targeting her past emphasis on the concept of systemic racism known as “critical race theory” that has become a lightning rod for conservatives.
Republicans also are pushing back on Kiran Ahuja’s support for abortion rights at a time when a long-standing ban on federal funding for the procedure — known as the Hyde Amendment — has emerged as a renewed flash point for the right because of Biden’s support for overturning it.
The delay on Ahuja’s nomination is being led by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., although several Republicans objected to a quick confirmation vote for her, according to senior Democratic and GOP officials. The move will force Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to go through procedural hurdles on the Senate floor, rather than move quickly with a pro forma vote that is more common for nominees to lower-profile posts.
Ahuja’s candidacy to lead the Office of Personnel Management, which cleared a key committee nearly two months ago, is now in a long queue of Biden nominees pending in the Senate. She probably will be confirmed in the evenly divided Senate unless a Democrat objects and all Republicans oppose her, but it’s unclear whether a vote will be scheduled on the crowded docket before senators leave for their next recess at the end of June.
The delay deals another setback to Biden’s pledge to rebuild the federal government after the tumultuous Trump years, which left many departments in the government short-staffed.
With no nominee to head the White House Office of Management and Budget and no one confirmed to lead the General Services Administration, which handles federal procurement and real estate, the three agencies in charge of overall management of the vast government and its 2.1 million career employees are without permanent leadership six months into the administration.
“[Office of Personnel Management] plays a key role in carrying out President Biden’s efforts to rebuild and revitalize our federal workforce, which includes many of my constituents,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., whose district includes tens of thousands of federal employees, said in an email. “It’s crucial that the Senate move quickly to confirm her.”
The White House has pressed Schumer to bring the nomination to a quick vote, but Ahuja is competing for a spot on a heavy Senate calendar.
“Kiran Ahuja is a qualified, experienced, and dedicated public servant who we are looking forward to leading the Office of Personnel Management in its work protecting the safety of the workforce, empowering federal employees, and building a federal workforce that looks like America,” Chris Meagher, a deputy White House press secretary, wrote in an email.
Ahuja did not return an email seeking comment.
“Senator Hawley has a hold on Kiran Ahuja’s nomination because of her history promoting radical critical race theorists,” Hawley spokeswoman Kelli Ford said in an email. “These associations merit real scrutiny, especially in light of Ms. Ahuja’s nomination to a role that would allow her to reinstate race-based training sessions throughout the entire federal government.
“Democrats sought to fast-track a vote, but Senator Hawley believes adequate debate time and full Senate consideration is needed for this nominee,” Ford wrote. The senator is expected to speak against Ahuja’s appointment on the Senate floor.
Republicans have targeted critical race theory as divisive and false, and have moved to ban its teaching in schools through measures in GOP-led state legislatures. In a speech last week to a Republican group in New Hampshire, former Vice President Mike Pence called systemic racism a “left-wing myth” and said critical race theory is teaching young children to “be ashamed of their skin color.”
Other senators have sought assurances that she would follow the Hyde Amendment, assuming it was still federal law. Before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved her nomination in April, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, the committee’s ranking Republican was one of several Republicans to cite critical race theory and Ahuja’s support for abortion rights as reasons for his “no” vote.
Ahuja said during her hearing that “The Hyde Amendment is the law of the land, and I will follow the law.”
In his fiscal 2022 budget request, released late last month, Biden omitted the Hyde Amendment language, thus attempting to void a decades-old ban on federal funding for abortions that he long supported before reversing his stance during the presidential campaign.
In June 2019, Biden declared he would no longer support limits on funding for abortions, citing an environment in which the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide is under attack in Republican-majority states. “Circumstances have changed,” he said.