Joe Biden‘s choice to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, could lead to explosive confirmation hearings.
Tanden, the CEO and president of the far-left Center for American Progress, has reportedly irritated attacked members of both parties, from Bernie Sanders supporters to establishment politicians to conservatives.
She claimed that Russian hackers in the 2016 presidential election flipped votes from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to then-Republican nominee Donald Trump, the New York Post reported.
“Russians did enough damage to affect more than 70k votes in 3 states,” Tanden said about the results in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“Why would hackers hack in unless they could change results? What’s the point?” she said, adding that “Trump was as surprised as everyone else” when he won.
These views would not be popular in a Senate confirmation hearing in which every Democratic member and some Republican members have mocked the president for alleging, with substantial evidence, that fraud flipped the outcome of the 2020 election.
In 2008, she allegedly punched a journalist, Faiz Shakir, who later became the manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, after he questioned Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iraq War, Fox News reported.
Tanden served as Clinton’s policy director during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.
“Ms. Tanden responded by circling back to Mr. Shakir after the interview and, according to a person in the room, punching him in the chest,” the New York Times reported in 2019.
Then she admitted, “I didn’t slug him, I pushed him.”
She angered Bernie Bros during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, too.
Everything toxic about the corporate Democratic Party is embodied in Neera Tanden. https://t.co/kWHcUK2VZ5
— BJG ? (@briebriejoy) November 30, 2020
You tweeted this out right after you announced you are appointing Neera Tanden, who has spent the last 4 years vilifying progressives. https://t.co/2cZn6HXJud
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) November 30, 2020
Tanden’s far-left views will anger conservatives, too, especially her support for single-payer health care through the Medicare for America Act, a bill introduced in 2019, Americans for Tax Reform reported.
“Health care is a fundamental human right, not a privilege,” Tanden said. “It’s exciting to see this proposal, which guarantees universal coverage, in the Congress.”
The bill went beyond single-payer health care and imposed “public health excise taxes.”
One of these excises would have imposed a federal tax on sugary beverages at the rate of 1 cent per 4.2 grams of sugar.
Even Sanders opposed the soda excise tax.
“The mechanism here is fairly regressive,” he said. “And that is, it will be increasing taxes on low income and working people.”
Senate aides have labeled her nomination dead on arrival.
“Neera Tanden, who has an endless stream of disparaging comments about the Republican Senators’ whose votes she’ll need, stands zero chance of being confirmed,” wrote Drew Brandewie, spokesman for Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tx., on Twitter.
To save face, Tanden has deleted about 1,100 tweets since Nov. 16 in preparation for a Senate hearing, The Federalist reported.
One since-deleted and unsaved tweet about Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., evoked nasty responses, indicating that her original message was not favorable to the swing-vote Senator.
.@neeratanden appears to have deleted her tweets about Susan Collins, whose vote she’ll likely need for confirmation.
h/t @varadmehta pic.twitter.com/atwonFCaMb— KC Johnson (@kcjohnson9) November 30, 2020
