US President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated Kiran Ahuja, an Indian-American, to head an agency that runs the federal civil service even as Neera Tanden, another of his appointees from the community, saw her path to confirmation continuing to narrow over harsh tweets in the past.
Ahuja, who was born to immigrants from India and grew up in Georgia, has been named head of the office of personnel and management (OPM), a key agency that oversees the federal civil services. Her appointment will need to be confirmed by the US Senate.
Ahuja, a lawyer, was executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in the Obama-Biden administration, and had served as the chief of staff at the agency she has been nominated to head.
President Biden has appointed around two dozen Indian-Americans to senior positions.
One of them, Tanden, who has been named to head the office of budget and management, is in trouble and there is talk that Biden may have to pull her nomination.
More Republican senators announced their opposition to Tanden’s nomination, which was thrown at the mercy of the opposition party after Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator, came out against her, jeopardising her confirmation in an evenly divided 100-member chamber.
Tanden’s Democratic support is down to 49; there are 48 Democratic senators and two independents who caucus with them.
She needs the support of at least one Republican senator to compensate for Manchin’s ‘no’ vote and to get to the half-way mark of 50 from where she will need to be carried over the finish line by vice-president Kamala Harris’s tie-breaker vote.
The hope was she would be bailed out by moderate Republicans who have broken with the party before, such as Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, who voted earlier in the month to convict former president Donald Trump in his Senate impeachment trial.
But they have both said they will not vote to confirm Tanden. More moderate Republicans have since come out against her as well.
Names of some former Obama administration officials have emerged to replace Tanden, if Biden decides to withdraw her nomination.
By Hindustan Times
WhatsApp us