Neera Tanden, President Biden’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, apologized for her partisan rhetoric in the first of her two confirmation hearing showdowns with Senate Republicans.
During her opening statement before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Tanden acknowledged her past as “an impassioned advocate” in both in her roles as president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and a fierce ally of former President Bill Clinton and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
“I know there have been some concerns about some of my past language on social media, and I regret that language and take responsibility for it,” she told lawmakers.
Tanden went on to say she understood being budget chief required “bipartisan action, as well as nonpartisan adherence to facts and evidence.”
Republican senators have panned the nominee over her now-deleted tweets even though they brushed off former President Donald Trump’s posts on social media that included many insults directed at Democrats and his other perceived foes.
Biden’s announcement that he was tapping Tanden to direct OMB, the agency tasked with drafting his budget and overseeing his administration’s policy implementation, outraged the Left and Right.
And tensions quickly became evident Tuesday when Ranking Member Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, referred to the White House’s one-sided negotiations over Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.
“The current administration seems not to be interested in pursuing a bipartisan solution but rather has moved ahead with the idea of what’s called reconciliation, which would not require, in theory, working with Republicans,” said Portman, who led President George W. Bush’s OMB.
During her time at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, Tanden blasted Trump and his congressional allies on social media and during TV appearances, typically daily.
Portman also quoted a handful of Tanden’s tweets, mentioning her now-deleted missives that were nixed ahead of her nomination becoming public. For instance, she once referred to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as “Moscow Mitch” and “Voldemort.” She refused to link the deletions to her candidacy and later told Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson she did so without input from Biden’s transition team.
While introducing Tanden, who could be the first minority woman and first South Asian American OMB director, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar conceded that “not everyone in this room will agree with every solution that she’s put forth in her career.”
“I don’t agree with every solution she’s put forth in her career, but what matters, my friends, is her devotion to her country,” Klobuchar said.
Tanden is scheduled to appear before the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday. The panel’s chairman, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has been open about his anger at Tanden over how she mobilized the Center for American Progress against him during his 2016 primary against Hillary Clinton.
“I worry that the corporate money CAP is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the role it is playing in the progressive movement,” Sanders wrote in a letter at the time.
