The Biden administration has announced that they are pulling back their nomination of Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget.
This was not a party-line failure. Moderate democrats shared concerns about her too. Good. They were right to.
The OMB is one of those agencies that is supposed to be at least somewhat independent, keeping an accurate score on things such as budget deficits and economic forecasts. It’s supposed to be credible to both sides. Tanden was far from credible. Her specialty was political agitprop, not honest fiscal bookkeeping.
Some jobs require at least a measure of credibility across party and ideological lines. Budget director is one of them.
President Biden has a new opportunity to nominate a credible Democrat to the job.
Given the amount of spending we’re looking at and the concerns looming over inflation and the health of the economy, credibility is exactly what we need.
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