President Joe Biden lost his first cabinet-level choice.
Neera Tanden, the struggling candidate for the position of director of the Biden Office of Administration and Budget, officially withdrew her nomination for the post after days of uncertainty about whether she had enough votes to be confirmed in the U.S. Senate.
“Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no way forward for confirmation, and I don’t want continued consideration of my appointment to be a distraction from his other priorities,” Tanden, the president of the left think tank Center for American Progress, said. in a statement released Tuesday.
With her withdrawal, Tanden becomes the first nominee for a position in the White House Cabinet to be sunk by his old tweets, which strongly criticized several lawmakers. The Biden administration emphasized the historical nature of Tanden’s nomination; she served in President Bill Clinton’s White House and had experience running a major think tank, and if confirmed, she would have been the first black woman and the first Asian American woman to lead the OMB.
But much of Tanden’s curriculum was overshadowed by his proliferation of online posts – at least 1,000 tweets wiping out both Republicans and left-wing Democrats – which Tanden quietly began to delete in November 2020.
Tanden’s decision comes after a few days of intense attempts to win over Republican senators whose votes she needed to confirm. In a Senate where Democrats have a majority of one vote, Tanden needed Republican support, as he had already lost a critical Democratic vote he needed in West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who recently announced that he would oppose Tanden’s confirmation.
Tanden and the Biden White House hoped that Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) could turn around and give them the vote they needed. In fact, until Tanden officially withdrew his nomination, Murkowski told reporters that he was still undecided about the nomination.
Biden released a statement accepting Tanden’s resignation and mentioned that he would like to find another place for her in his administration, where she did not need confirmation from the Senate.
“I have the utmost respect for her record of achievements, her experience and her advice, and I look forward to having her play a role in my administration,” said Biden in the statement.
Biden’s administration could have a quick replacement for Tanden
On Tuesday, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young had her confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee. And it was much better than Tanden’s weeks before.
Young is a former director of the House Appropriations Committee, with deep ties to Hill and respect for lawmakers and officials on both sides of the corridor. It is also important that she does not have a Twitter account.
Although Republican senators spent a lot of time admonishing Tanden for his social media postings in his audience, they had relatively bright things to say about Young.
“Everyone who deals with you on our side has nothing but good things to say. You can convince me not to vote for you, but I doubt it, ”Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Young during her hearing on Tuesday.
With Republicans likely voting to confirm Young, the Biden administration may well want to move it to the Tanden post. Some Republicans, including senior Senate Endowment Committee member Richard Shelby of Alabama, had previously said they would vote to confirm Young if she were Tanden’s replacement.
And with Democratic congressmen looking ready to soon pass a major Covid-19 stimulus bill by Congress using budgetary reconciliation, the Biden government will likely want to quickly confirm an OMB chief – a key office charged with planning and overseeing budget implementation. as soon as Congress approves it.
Tanden’s dilemma demonstrates the complicated math of a uniformly divided Senate and the power of individual senators to block parts of Biden’s agenda. Although Tanden has done much to irritate the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party over the years, it was the moderates who sank it.