Biden Expected to Unveil Full Budget Proposal Next Week, Without a Permanent OMB Director 

Biden Expected to Unveil Full Budget Proposal Next Week, Without a Permanent OMB Director 

President Biden is poised to submit his full fiscal 2022 budget request next week, despite not having a permanent budget director or even a nominee for the position yet. 


Neera Tanden withdrew her nomination for Office of Management and Budget director on March 2 after several senators said they would not vote for her. Shalanda Young has been serving as acting OMB director since she was confirmed as deputy director on March 23. Many lawmakers called for her to be the director nominee; however, the White House has not announced a nominee yet. 


“There have certainly been long delays in confirming OMB nominees before now, but none have ever been voted down or withdrawn after formal nomination until Ms. Tanden,” Andrew Rudalevige, chair of the government and legal studies department and Thomas B. Reed Professor of Government at Bowdoin College, told Government Executive. “There are often, of course, anticipated reactions taken into account in regarding who is nominated in the first place.” 


The first OMB director requiring confirmation–– following a change in the law––was Jim Lynn in 1975. Since then, presidents’ first OMB director nominees have been confirmed fairly quickly (usually between January 21 and January 25, with the exception of President Trump’s Mick Mulvaney on February 16), according to Rudalevige.


Rudalevige––whose book, “By Executive Order: Bureaucratic Management and the Limits of Presidential Power,” was published last month––also gave his observations on what the lack of a confirmed director means during this budget season: 



“Moving fast to a new president’s budget is always a very hard lift, made harder this time around by the outgoing ..

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