President Joe Biden has appointed longtime Democratic policy aide Neera Tanden as a senior White House adviser after her earlier nomination for budget director was scuttled by Senate opposition.
Tanden’s role will include planning for potential health policy changes if Republicans succeed in their efforts to strike down the Affordable Care Act at the Supreme Court, according to a White House official who requested anonymity to discuss the job before it was formally announced. Tanden will also be involved in a review of the US Digital Service, a technology unit that works out of the White House, the official added.
The post, which was reported earlier Friday by CNN, is a staff position that does not require Senate confirmation.
In early March, she withdrew from consideration to be director of the Office of Management and Budget after it became clear she didn’t have the votes to be confirmed. Senators’ objections to her nomination were rooted in her use of Twitter, where she’d spent years posting comments that were critical of her political opponents, including supporters of independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and as well as prominent Republicans.
Several of those targets then had her nomination in their hands.
Tanden led the liberal Center for American Progress for nearly a decade after working on the Obama administration’s health-care overhaul.
“Neera’s intellect, tenacity, and political savvy will be an asset to the Biden administration as she assumes a new role as senior adviser to the president,” the center’s founder, John Podesta, said in a statement. “While we will be sorry to lose her considerable policy expertise and leadership at the Center for American Progress—an organization which we founded together in 2003 — I am exceptionally thrilled to see her step into a new position serving this White House and the American people.”
Before joining Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Tanden spent more than a decade working for Bill and Hillary Clinton. She held domestic policy roles in the Clinton White House, eventually becoming an aide to Hillary Clinton and joining the then-first lady’s 2000 campaign for a New York Senate seat. Tanden was legislative director in Clinton’s Senate office and policy director on her 2008 presidential campaign.
