Heather A. Higginbottom, the Obama administration’s nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, faced tough interrogation today during a hearing with the Senate Budget committee. Ranking committee member and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions asked some of the same questions about the president’s budget request for 2012 he asked of her prospective boss, OMB director Jack Lew, last month. Either Higginbottom was unprepared, or she simply didn’t know how else to respond: