U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Monday named Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that oversees the administration’s budget and federal agencies, making her the first American of Indian descent to be named. for a federal cabinet in a Democratic administration. .
Biden also appointed former Fed Chair Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary, making her the first woman to hold that position, and Cecilia Rouse, a Princeton University labor economist, as the first African-American to preside. the Council of Economic Advisers. Tanden is the first South Asian and colored woman to headline the WBO. Yellen and Tanden will need to be confirmed by the United States Senate.
“As we get to work to control the virus, this is the team that will bring immediate economic relief to the American people during this economic crisis and help us rebuild our economy better than ever,” President-elect Biden said in a statement announcing the new appointments.
“This team looks like America and has serious purpose, the highest degree of competition, and an unwavering faith in America’s promise. They will be ready the first day to go to work for all Americans. “
President-elect Biden, who injured an ankle playing with one of his dogs on Sunday, also announced an all-female press team for his White House with Jen Psaki as the most visible face of the team as press secretary. She is a veteran of the Obama administration.
Biden made history before when he cast Kamala Harris as his running mate. She is now the first woman, the first black, and the first American of Indian, Asian and South Asian descent to be elected vice president.
Although he is the first American Indian in the cabinet of a Democratic president, Tanden will be the second overall for the community. Nikki Haley was the first of Indian descent to be appointed to the federal cabinet as President Donald Trump’s US ambassador to the UN, a rank position in the cabinet that was demoted to her successors.
“Great job and a really important first in the Cabinet. She has a great story (single mom, she knows what it’s like to be poor), but she went to Harvard and is the most knowledgeable person in progressive economics I’ve ever met, ”said Shekar Narasimhan, one of Biden’s top fundraisers and a y close advisor to the campaign and transition team. “I’m (a) big Neera fan!” Narasimhan, who has known Tanden for a long time, confessed.
Tanden studied law at Yale and served as senior adviser for health care reform at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, developing policies and provisions of the Affordable Care Act, the president’s flagship law. Barack Obama now called Obamacare. She was born in Massachusetts in 1970 to Indian parents, who divorced when she was five years old. Tanden and her brother were raised by their mother. Tanden has talked about her family gambling on food stamps to survive.
“Immediately after Kamala Harris becomes the next vice president, it is great to see another well qualified Native American woman being nominated for a cabinet-level position,” said MR Rangaswami, founder of Indiaspora, a community advocacy group. . . “It is gratifying to see someone who has dedicated themselves to public service be recognized for this important role in managing the country’s budget.”
Two other Indian Americans are in the mix of names being speculated for other cabinet positions. Vivek Murthy, a physician and former surgeon general, is one of the leading aspiring secretary of health and human services, a possibility that has been prompted by his appointment by Biden as co-chair of his advisory council to combat Covid-19, which, The president-elect has said it will be his first assignment after taking office in January. Others in the race are Michelle Lynn Lujan Grisham, Hispanic governor of New Mexico, and Jeffery D Zients, director of President Obama’s National Economic Council.
The second American Indian among the cabinet’s potentials is Arun Majumdar. He is reportedly running for Secretary of Energy, to head a department whose key mandate includes the maintenance, not the deployment or use, of the US nuclear arsenal; the department has its origin in the Manhattan Project.
Majumdar, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, heads the Precourt Institute of Energy at Stanford University and faces Ernest Moniz, Obama’s energy secretary who played a leading role in shaping the Iran nuclear deal, an achievement of foreign policy characteristic of the Obama-Biden administration. that President Trump has tried to ruin by pulling America out of him. Biden can revive it if, as his aides have indicated, Iran agrees to comply.
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