by Mary Lou Masters
President Joe Biden on Friday picked the White House staff secretary to succeed Susan Rice as his domestic policy chief.
Biden, who served with Rice under the Obama administration, announced Rice’s resignation from domestic policy adviser on April 24 where she served for two years. Neera Tanden, the president’s staff secretary and failed nominee to head the Office of Management (OMB), will take Rice’s place, according to a White House press release.
Tanden (pictured above) was nominated to lead the OMB, which is tasked with conveying the White House’s economic policy agenda to the Legislature, in 2020 following Biden’s election, but withdrew after several controversies surfaced during the confirmation process.
The long-time Democratic political operative once punched a reporter after asking a question that was critical of Hillary Clinton, to whom she served an adviser to when she was first lady, a senator and when she ran for president in 2016. Tanden also emailed staff of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank she led, suggesting that Libya should pay back the U.S. in oil for intervening in their 2011 civil war.
Tanden also tweeted comments bashing senators from both sides of the aisle that were brought up during her confirmation. She criticized Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and several GOP senators, like Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, where she called the Senate Majority Leader “Voldemort” and Collins “the worst.”
“I don’t mind disagreements in policy, I think that’s great. I love the dialectic, but the comments were personal. I mean, you called Sen. Sanders everything but an ignorant slut,” Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy told Tanden during a hearing.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia opposed Tanden’s confirmation citing “her overtly partisan statements” would be a detriment to the relationship between the Legislature and the Executive.
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Mary Lou Masters is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Neera Tanden” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “U.S. Capitol” by noelle.
