Neera Tanden will serve as director of the Domestic Policy Council, making her the top domestic adviser to President Biden, the White House announced Friday.
The move comes two years after Mr. Biden pulled her nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget. She had come under fire during the confirmation process for harsh tweets aimed at lawmakers.
Heading the Domestic Policy Council is not a Senate-confirmed position, so Mr. Biden doesn’t have to worry about repeating what happened in March 2021.
Ms. Tanden, the first Asian American to head the council, will replace Susan Rice, who is stepping down this month after two years in the position. Ms. Tanden is a senior adviser and staff secretary at the White House and has been a longtime fixture in the Democratic Party.
“She has 25 years of experience in public policy, has served three presidents and led one of the largest think tanks in the country for nearly a decade. She was a key architect of the Affordable Care Act and helped drive key domestic policies that became part of my agenda, including clean energy subsidies and sensible gun reform,” Mr. Biden said in a statement, adding that these experiences “will serve my administration and the American people well.”
In her new role, Ms. Tanden will be involved in immigration, gun safety, health care and Mr. Biden‘s student loan forgiveness plan.
Ms. Tanden had served as an aide to the Clintons, working as an associate director for domestic policy to President Clinton and as an adviser to Hillary Clinton on domestic policy when she was first lady and a senator from New York.
Ms. Tanden worked on Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns as well as in the Obama administration where she helped enact the Affordable Care Act.
Upon Mr. Biden’s election, he nominated Ms. Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget only to see the nomination go down in flames amid her social media posts.
In a series of tweets, she compared Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, to Voldemort, said a vampire “has more heart” than Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, and called Sen. Susan Collins, Main Republican, “criminally ignorant.”
Ms. Tanden also took to Twitter to suggest that Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, was helped by Russia during the 2016 campaign.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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