WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden withdrew the nomination of longtime Democratic policy adviser Neera Tanden to serve as his budget director, an acknowledgment that she could not win the 50 Senate votes needed to secure confirmation.
"I have accepted Neera Tanden's request to withdraw her name from nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget," Biden said in a statement Tuesday night. "I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel, and I look forward to having her serve in a role in my Administration. She will bring valuable perspective and insight to our work."
The collapse of Tanden's nomination marked the administration's first defeat in filling a Cabinet post. It also underscored the fragility of the slim Democratic majority in the evenly split Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris is the tie-breaker, and the power each senator holds on party-line votes.
Tanden was opposed by Republican lawmakers who cited her acrimonious tweets attacking them during the Trump years, when she was serving as the director of a progressive think tank in Washington.
The White House had hoped to persuade Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to cast a decisive vote in support of Tanden, in defiance of her party's united opposition to the nomination. On Tuesday evening, Murkowski told reporters she had not made a decision on the nomination.
Even Murkowski was not spared in Tanden's caustic Twitter feed. As Republicans crafted their tax bill in late 2017, Tanden tweeted that Murkowski was "high on your own supply" and that her defense of the bill was "all garbage."
Tanden's candidacy became imperiled last month when moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia announced that he would not support her nomination, leaving the White House in the position of having to win at least one Republican's vote to secure her confirmation.
Manchin cited Tanden's history of partisan tweets as the reason behind his decision.
"I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget," he said. "We must take meaningful steps to end the political division and dysfunction that pervades our politics."
Other Democrats supported Tanden's nomination, pointing to her history as a policy adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She also told a compelling personal story, about the role government programs have played in her own life as the daughter of a single mother who relied on public housing and nutrition programs.
"She's just very impressive," Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said. Especially compared to Trump appointees to the job, he added, "I think she's pretty damn qualified."
Moderate Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona had not taken a public position on Tanden's nomination.
After Manchin made his opposition public, two moderate Republicans considered among the most likely to support Tanden, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, made clear they would vote against her, too, also citing her tweets. In one, Tanden had called Collins "the worst."
"Congress has to be able to trust the OMB director to make countless decisions in an impartial manner, carrying out the letter of the law and congressional intent," Collins said in a statement. "Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency. Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend."
Collins also said Tanden's deletion of her past tweets "raises concerns about her commitment to transparency."
Tanden, who would have been the first Indian American woman to serve in the post, had been scheduled to receive a vote in the Senate Homeland Security committee late last month, but the vote was canceled at the last minute.
Since then, the White House continued to express confidence. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at one point that Tanden "has a broad spectrum of support, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to labor unions, and has a strong record of working with both parties that we expect to grow in President Biden's Cabinet as the
first South Asian woman to lead OMB."