Neera Tanden for OMB
Republican Senators and Joe Manchin (D. W Va.) are holding up Neera Tanden’s confirmation for OMB. The grounds are she has posted mean tweets about certain Republicans. I gather she has also engaged in spirited Twitter repartee with prominent supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders. There is not a word about her skills, knowledge, policy judgement and deep understanding of the vast issues facing our nation.
“Mean tweets” — that’s an interesting excuse since these same Republicans never said word one about Trump’s constant stream of mean tweets about Democrats, Republicans, many in his own cabinet and random Americans who daily provoked his ire. When it came time to impeach him, most Republicans chose to excuse his efforts to overthrow the government, to incite an insurrection at the Capitol and to endlessly carry on with baseless lies to the American people about a fair election he lost by a very large margin.
Ms. Tanden was kind enough to speak at our ITUP conference in 2016; she was inspiring, well-informed and thoroughly personable. I’ve followed her proposals for health reform for many years and been duly impressed.
If the standard for confirmation is now whether one has said mean things about members of the opposing party, I cannot imagine that any Presidential nominees will be confirmed. Neera Tanden should be confirmed by the Senate; she would be an excellent Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 2/26/21