Neera Tanden’s nomination to the Office of Management and Budget appears to be going down in flames. But she isn’t President Biden’s worst Cabinet nominee: Health and Human Services nominee Xavier Becerra is, and his nomination should be voted down.
The complaints about Tanden’s “mean tweets” overshadow the real issues with her nomination. She is a conspiracy theorist, arguing that everything from voting machines to former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy was compromised by Russia. Tanden’s temperament earns a failing grade, given her retaliation against an employee who had reported sexual harassment, and she has no career qualifications to head OMB.
On the point of qualifications, it’s no different for Becerra. The former California attorney general has no background in healthcare or the medical field, a far more important lack of qualifications than Tanden, given the role of HHS in the waning days of the coronavirus pandemic.
What Becerra is qualified for is serving as a partisan attack dog. Becerra is in favor of just about anything to push abortion. Letting states discriminate against hospitals that don’t provide or recommend abortions? He’s in favor of that. Forcing pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to advertise abortions? Check. Forcing Catholic parishes to violate Catholic teaching on birth control? Becerra, nominated by Biden, a devout Catholic, has been pushing that for decades.
Becerra is just as toxic and overtly partisan as centrist Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia warned Tanden is when he announced he would vote against her. Becerra would use his position at HHS to push abortion, fight against religious liberty, and allow illegal immigrants access to state healthcare exchanges, a provision that President Barack Obama explicitly rejected during debates on Obamacare.
Biden and his allies will predictably fume over a rejection of Becerra, arguing that Biden needs his people in place at HHS to deal with the pandemic. But Becerra offers nothing in terms of experience, and he was picked to fill a racial quota as much as he was for anything else.
Whether Tanden was intended to be a sacrificial lamb or not, she can’t be allowed to serve that purpose. Becerra is just as unqualified and just as partisan, with a record in Congress and as California’s attorney general to illustrate it. Republicans should oppose him in lockstep, and centrist Democrats who border integrity and responding to the pandemic should join them.
