President-elect Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate Neera Tanden to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget on Monday, making good on his campaign promise to elevate Asian American voices in government by tapping an Indian American for a key cabinet position.
If confirmed by the Senate, Tanden would become both the first woman of color and the first South Asian American woman to oversee the federal agency, which is responsible for preparing the White House's budget requests to Congress.
Tanden, 50, is an experienced Democratic policy staffer and close adviser to Hillary Clinton. She serves as President the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and previously worked at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama administration.
"Tanden has been a leading architect and advocate of policies designed to support working families, foster broad-based economic growth, and curb inequality throughout her career," the Biden-Harris transition team said in a statement. "Her experience as a child relying on food stamps and Section 8 housing — a social safety net that offered her single mother the foundation she needed to land a good job and punch her family’s ticket to the middle class — instilled in her the true necessity of an economy that serves the dignity and humanity of all people."
Tanden's nomination could face a rocky start on Capitol Hill given her history of partisan tweets, guest appearances on national cable programs, and fierce criticism of Republican senators. But she is expected to "push hard for even more deficit spending" early in the Biden administration if she survives a potential Senate fight, according to Yahoo Finance.
Updated at 10:30am ET on November 30, 2020.
