Neera Tanden, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, suffered a significant setback Monday as two moderate Republicans said they would not support her nomination, potentially dooming her chances for confirmation.
The statements of opposition from Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, two Republicans with a professed willingness to work with the Biden administration, further winnowed Tanden’s chances in an evenly divided Senate. Three senators in four days have announced plans to vote against her, after Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., became the first to publicly oppose her confirmation.
A White House official said Monday that the administration continued to stand behind Tanden’s nomination, but her path to confirmation was increasingly narrow. Her failure to win confirmation would be the first casualty for Biden, who has so far been able to win Senate support for several other Cabinet picks, though many nominees have yet to face full Senate votes.
Tanden’s nomination is endangered largely because of statements she made in the past, particularly on social media, in which she leveled partisan and often personal criticism at lawmakers in both parties. Republican lawmakers have increasingly questioned whether she would be able to bring the kind of “unity” that Biden has promised.
Collins and Romney pointed to Tanden’s approach to social media — namely, a relentless stream of critical tweets that were quietly deleted before her confirmation hearings this month — as reason for their opposition. Collins was among those on the receiving end of Tanden’s online wrath, which extended to both lawmakers and activists in both parties.
“Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend,” Collins said, adding that Tanden “has neither the experience nor the temperament” for the position. The nominee’s decision to quietly cleanse parts of her social media feed, Collins concluded, “raises concerns about her commitment to transparency.”
Shortly after that statement, a spokesperson for Romney confirmed the senator’s opposition, noting that “he believes it’s hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.” It was unclear whether that would be enough to pull the nomination.