House Budget Committee Republicans Urge Senate to Reject Tanden Nomination for OMB Director
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Budget Committee Republicans sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell as well as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders and Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Lindsey Graham highlighting serious concerns with President Biden’s nominee for the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Neera Tanden, and urging that they reject her nomination.The letter points to instances during Tanden’s career – particularly in her role as the head of the Center for American Progress (CAP) – where she did not exemplify the level of sound judgement, bipartisan civility, and leadership that is needed at OMB. House Budget Committee Republicans wrote, “it would be the height of irresponsibility to put someone with this documented managerial record in the top leadership role at a major federal agency, responsible for hundreds of civil servants, putting at risk the rights and protections guaranteed to the employees of OMB.”
In their letter, House Budget Committee Republicans note that Tanden has demonstrated a concerning level of partisanship – using social media to attack Republican Senators – to the point that she felt compelled to delete over 1,000 tweets from her Twitter account in recent months. Additionally, as president of CAP, Tanden “cultivated relationships with Wall Street financiers, big banks, Silicon Valley titans, foreign governments, defense contractors, and the health care industry” while at the same time “CAP has a history of going to great lengths to appease its donors, from censoring its own researchers’ reports to pushing policies that directly benefit its benefactors.”
Concerns are raised not only about Tanden’s judgement and decision-making while at the head of an organization but also the sort of policies she supported during her career that would harm America’s working class – “numerous destructive and expensive policies, some of which would particularly harm middle- and low- income families while others would weaken the American economy as a whole.”
House Budget Committee Republicans conclude that “as President Biden speaks of unity and bipartisanship, his OMB nominee has repeatedly demonstrated extreme partisanship, even alienating members of the President’s own party. Ms. Tanden does not appear to have the leadership qualities needed to represent such an important agency, and her divisive history will likely only further divide Americans, rather than unite.”
Read the full letter here.
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