Excerpt: "President Biden's nominee to be director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget spent the last decade opposing progressive policies."
Neera Tanden. (photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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20 February 21
resident Biden’s nominee to be director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget spent the last decade opposing progressive policies, while raising huge amounts of money for her think tank from wealthy donors representing corporate interests and from foreign governments, including the anti-democratic United Arab Emirates.
In recent years, Tanden has become known as one of the most anti-progressive voices of the neoliberal establishment. She has expressed support for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and opposition to Medicare for All and a $15 federal minimum wage. She is a determined foe of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing; journalist and former Sanders speechwriter David Sirota called her “the single biggest, most aggressive Bernie Sanders critic in the United States.”
As OMB Director, Tanden would be overseeing what the Washington Post described as “the nerve center of the federal government . . . setting fiscal and personnel policy for agencies, and overseeing the regulatory process across the executive branch.”
Her coziness with corporate elites raises questions about her potential role in the regulatory process. As the Washington Post recently reported, she has “mingled with deep-pocketed donors who made their fortunes on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley and in other powerful sectors of corporate America.” And, “at formal pitches and swanky fundraisers, Tanden personally cultivated the bevy of benefactors fueling the $45 million to $50 million annual budget” of her think tank, the Center for American Progress.
In 2011, after the U.S. and NATO militarily overthrew Libya’s government (leading to years of chaos and violence), Tanden sent an email that later became public and infamous. Tanden wrote: "We have a giant deficit. They have a lot of oil. Most Americans would choose not to engage in the world because of that deficit. If we want to continue to engage in the world, gestures like having oil rich countries pay us back doesn't seem crazy to me." The email's subject line: “Should Libya pay us back?”
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