President Biden is slowly setting up his office, but what is likely to be his most violent confrontation for Senate confirmation (featuring his old friend and rival Bernie Sanders) has not yet been scheduled.
Biden’s announcement that he hired Neera Tanden, 50, as designated director of the Office of Management and Budget, charged with drafting his budget and overseeing his administration’s budget plans and policy implementation, was met with derision by his right and left .
But even before Tanden’s candidacy is put to a vote in the Senate, she faces friendly fire: Democratic opposition.
The Sanders Senate Budget Committee has jurisdiction over Tanden’s position, and the two clashed openly. Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, as well as a former administration student of former President Bill Clinton, was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton’s two campaigns in the White House, using CAP to boost her offer.
The newly installed president has not yet scheduled a confirmation hearing for Tanden. Although his panel is linked to Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package and efforts to legislate a raise in the federal minimum wage, his decision to delay his appearance brought up the pair’s previous public clashes when Sanders challenged Clinton to the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination
“I don’t know, honestly. We are working on it,” he told reporters last week when asked about the schedule. “It is happening … Obviously, there is a process that we are going to go through.”
In 2016, Sanders criticized Tanden in a letter for “defaming my team and supporters and belittling progressive ideas”.
“I am concerned that the corporate money that CAP is receiving is influencing in a disorderly and inappropriate manner the role it is playing in the progressive movement,” Sanders wrote.
And the animosity has not abated. A spokeswoman for Sanders’ campaign in 2020 tweeted last November that Tanden personified “everything that is toxic about the corporate Democratic Party”.
The CAP has been scrutinized for contributions from its donors, including millions of UAE dollars in the past decade. Her leadership in the group was also criticized, especially the way she handled an alleged sexual harassment victim.
Tanden received support from liberals like Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and California Representative Barbara Lee, but a peculiarity in Congress could help push Sanders into Tanden’s nomination. The Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs shares jurisdiction over its role. If its president, Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, reported his appointment, Sanders’ committee panel would have only 30 days to act before it was canceled.
During her launch event, Biden emphasized her education as an immigrant as the daughter of a single mother who depended on food stamps, while calling her “a brilliant political mind with critical practical experience across the government”.
Republicans clung to Tanden’s bellicose presence on Twitter. Tanden, from his perch CAP, attacked former President Donald Trump and his allies in Congress on social media and during TV appearances. And Republicans were quick to argue that Tanden’s social media tenor was out of step with Biden’s call for unity.
“I just think it will be radioactive,” Texas Senator John Cornyn said last month.
She even deleted more than 1,000 of her nearly 88,000 tweets, apparently concerned that the posts would sink or complicate her nomination. In her missives, she attacked people like Maine Senator Susan Collins, a centrist Republican whose support she may need in a Senate divided equally between the two parties. She also harassed most of the Republican senators who ran for re-election in 2020. (Vice President Kamala Harris, however, can vote for a tiebreaker if necessary.)
His online harangues against his political rivals came as Democrats criticized Trump for doing the same to enemies and friends.
Online, she also raised the conspiracy theory that Russia hacked electoral systems in 2016 and altered the results to favor Trump. She also expressed her frustration at the closure of schools to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, drawing incorrect parallels with the French approach.
Tanden also broke with former First Lady Michelle Obama, who once said that when Trump and the Republicans “fall,” Democrats should “rise.” The OMB nominee is not a fan of the good road as a political tactic.
“An important lesson is that when they go down, going up doesn’t work,” wrote Tanden, according to the Wayback Machine, an Internet file.
A spokesman for South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior member of the Senate Budget Committee, remained silent about the Republican approach to Tanden’s hearing.
But a Republican operative told the Washington Examiner that the GOP has more substantive problems with Tanden’s nomination, describing Twitter’s complaints as a Democratic distraction. The source suggested there would be doubts about Tanden’s position on a $ 15 federal minimum wage after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen faced a similar line of investigation. Tanden was against an increase in the minimum wage in the past, saying in 2015 that it would be “counterproductive”. She also defended the “New Green Deal”, but pointed out the unpopularity of “Medicare for all”.