As President Biden weighs who to nominate to lead the Office of Management and Budget, one name continues to rise above the others: Shalanda Young.
Young checks several boxes for a potential Biden budget chief and has deep ties to Congress, where she has spent more than 14 years working for the House Appropriations Committee, becoming the staff director in 2017. Young would also be the first black woman to lead the OMB, which is a plus to an administration that has touted a commitment to diversity.
The 43-year-old Capitol Hill veteran was born in Louisiana and grew up as a child in the 1,500-person town of Clinton, which she described in a 2019 interview with Hill.TV as “a little tiny dot somewhere.” After middle school, she and her mother moved to Baton Rouge, where she graduated from high school.
Young opted to remain in the Bayou State for her education and attended Loyola University New Orleans before receiving a master’s degree in health administration from Tulane University, a prestigious private school also located in New Orleans.
WHITE HOUSE RESISTS SHALANDA YOUNG AS OMB NOMINEE AS CONGRESSIONAL PRESSURE GROWS
“A Southern girl until 18 years ago when I moved here,” Young said of herself and her journey to Washington, D.C. Young first came to the nation’s capital through the Presidential Management Fellowship Program, which is a competitive, two-year leadership development program that places recent graduates in roles working with the federal government.
“During those two years, I was mostly in budget offices at [the National Institutes of Health], and every time the Appropriations Committee called, you saw a lot of people aflutter,” Young recalled. “And so, when you hear that, you’re like, ‘Who are these people? I think I want to know these people; I may want to work for these people.’”
Young said that it was around that time that she decided she wanted to work with the powerful committee. She was detailed there for about seven months, during which she mostly worked on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies subcommittee while Democrats were in the minority.
She said that Washington has impressed her since the time she first arrived and worked as a management fellow at NIH, just down the hall from now-NIH Director Francis Collins, who was, at the time, working to map the human genome.
“This place is supposed to be filled with people from all walks of life, and I was given an equal shot to do this and no favors, but it worked out,” Young said.
After spending years in various positions within the Appropriations Committee, Young was promoted to staff director in 2017. In that role, she managed about 90 people and oversaw some $1.4 trillion in discretionary federal spending.
Young has also been hailed by Democrats as a top-notch negotiator, and as staff director, she was heavily involved in negotiations during 2019’s government shutdown that lasted for more than a month. Young said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California made sure she was at the table during the high-level talks that featured top Trump administration figures and congressional leaders.
Young is already being considered by the Senate to be deputy director of the OMB, and her nomination cleared the Senate Homeland Security Committee in a partisan 7-6 vote, and the Budget Committee approved her in a bipartisan 14-8 vote, with Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa joining Democrats.
“My work on the Appropriations Committee taught me that both sides can compromise without compromising their values — even when that means no one gets everything they want,” Young said at a confirmation hearing for deputy director of the OMB earlier this month.
And while her nomination has elicited some bipartisan support, some Republicans who voted against her took issue with a response she wrote about the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger.
The nominee wrote that “eliminating the Hyde Amendment is a matter of economic and racial justice because it most significantly impacts Medicaid recipients, who are low-income and more likely to be women of color.”
Despite being nominated as the deputy budget chief, Young became a front-runner to head the entire office after the White House withdrew Neera Tanden’s nomination, with one Democratic strategist saying that Biden choosing her “seems like a total slam dunk.”
Tanden had faced bipartisan backlash for her scathing attacks against lawmakers of both parties on Twitter, a problem that Young doesn’t appear to have given her apparent lack of presence on Twitter or other social media platforms.
Democratic leaders have lobbied hard for Young to be given the top slot at the OMB. Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina have all endorsed the idea, and Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro has “unreservedly” recommended she be nominated.
“Ms. Young is a legislative expert and a master of the federal budget process,” the Connecticut Democrat said in a statement. “She has deep knowledge of the whole of the federal government and an ability to work with anyone to accomplish big, important things for our country. While she has served as a Democratic staffer, her dedication to results has earned her respect across the aisle.”
It is unclear if Biden has already decided on Tanden’s replacement or when he will make an announcement, although White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Young could serve as acting director after she is confirmed by the Senate for the deputy director role.
“The president thinks so highly of her, he nominated her to be the deputy director of OMB, which is a very senior and significant job and role in the administration,” Psaki said. “I will reserve his space for him making his own decision about who is going to lead the budget department. We certainly know there’s lots of support on Capitol Hill.”
Other potential picks to run the OMB include former National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling and Ann O’Leary, the former chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. OMB director isn’t a ceiling in administrations either: OMB chief Mick Mulvaney served concurrently as White House chief of staff from January 2019 to March 2020.
It isn’t clear if Young is actively lobbying for the top job herself, although during the 2019 interview when she was still the Appropriations Committee’s staff director, Young was asked about advice she would give young aspiring civil servants.
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“I’ve also noticed in this town, if you’re really good at your job, people like to keep you around and won’t necessarily put you up for the next thing, especially in the executive branch,” she said. “So you have to be your own advocate.”
