Senator John Cornyn said Monday that Neera Tanden, who Joe Biden has chosen to lead the Office of Management and Budget, is perhaps the president-elect’s “worst nominee so far.”
“I think, in light of her combative and insulting comments about many members of the Senate, mainly on our side of the aisle, that it creates certainly a problematic path,” Cornyn reportedly said.
Before Biden tapped Tanden, a former Clinton and Obama adviser who now heads the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, for the position in his Cabinet on Monday, Republican senators were already calling her nomination doomed from the start.
On Sunday, Cornyn’s communications director Drew Brandewie said Tanden “stands zero chance of being confirmed” due to her “endless stream of disparaging comments” about GOP senators. She would need 51 votes in what could be a Republican-controlled Senate next year. Democrats have 48 Senate seats so far to Republicans’ 50, and both parties hope to win Georgia’s two Senate seats, both of which will be decided by runoff elections in January.
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas on Sunday called Tanden a “partisan hack.”
“Neera Tanden is a big-government, big-spending radical liberal who’s a terrible choice for OMB Director,” Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, tweeted.”It’s just more proof that Joe Biden and the Democrats will continue to move further and further to the Left.”
While president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, Tanden lambasted GOP senators for voting to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018.
She singled out for particular criticism Senator Susan Collins, who cast the deciding vote to confirm Kavanaugh, saying the Maine senator “stepped forward as the chief advocate for Judge Kavanaugh, offering a pathetically bad faith argument as cover for President Trump’s vicious attacks on survivors of sexual assault” and “revealed herself as a fake defender of Roe v. Wade, parroting ridiculous and debunked talking points.”
Send a tip to the news team at NR.