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.
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The Senate passed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week. There were concerns that the House and Senate would not dispense with the seven-year waiting period normally required of Pentagon chiefs with military experience before filling the civilian post. But with Austin now working across the Potomac River, attention is now turning to Biden’s choice to head the Office of Administration and Budget, Neera Tanden.
Biden’s announcement that he had chosen Tanden, 50, as the firm’s designated director with the task of writing his budget and overseeing his administration’s budget plans and policy implementation was met with derision by his right and left.
Republicans clung to Tanden’s bellicose presence on Twitter. Tanden, from his position as president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, 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 names 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, who was once a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, also broke with former First Lady Michelle Obama, who once said that when Trump and Republicans “go down,” Democrats should “go up.” 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”.
But even before Tanden’s candidacy is put to a vote in the Senate, she faces friendly fire: Democratic opposition.
Sanders’ committee has jurisdiction over Tanden’s position, and the two faced each other openly. Tanden, who is also a former student of former President Bill Clinton’s government, was a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton’s two campaigns in the White House, using CAP to boost his candidacy.
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, who were asking 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 by 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.
Aware of the ire of Democrats and Republicans, the Biden transition team tried to humanize its nominees – although the tactic did not help the new team secure a date for the budget candidate’s confirmation hearing.
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”.
Tag: News, Neera Tanden, Bernie Sanders, OMB, Nominations, Congress, Budgets and deficits, Center for American Progress, Think Tanks, White House, Joe Biden
Original Author: Naomi Lim
Original location: Neera Tanden’s rivalry with Bernie Sanders depends on OMB confirmation in the Senate
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