Biden pick for OMB director will push globalist policies that cost US jobs: Huckabee

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Mike Huckabee on Neera Tanden nomination: ‘Progressives don’t like her’

The former Arkansas governor reacts to Biden’s nomination for OMB director on ‘America’s Newsroom.’

President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will push globalist policies that will lead to the loss of U.S. jobs, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee warned Tuesday.

The Biden transition team announced Monday that Neera Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, was the choice to head the OMB.

Speaking on "America's Newsroom", Huckabee called Tanden “a classic liberal" and “what we would expect from the Biden Administration.”

“If people want to go back to a time when Americans were losing jobs to China, to Mexico, to Canada, to Vietnam and other countries of the world, they’re going to love Neera Tanden,” he added. “She will be just what the doctor ordered.”

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If confirmed, Tanden, a Hillary Clinton loyalist, would be the first woman of color to head the OMB, the agency responsible for drawing up and implementing the federal government's spending plan. But she faces a narrow path to confirmation: Biden's announcement elicited a fierce backlash from both Republicans and progressives.

Tanden has been an outspoken critic of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and has clashed online with progressives over policy differences.  

Sanders has not responded publicly to Biden's decision, but his former national press secretary tweeted criticism of the pick.

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"Everything toxic about the corporate Democratic Party is embodied in Neera Tanden," Briahna Joy Gray tweeted, sharing a video of Tanden speaking against Medicare-for-all.

“She has managed to hack off pretty much everybody,” Huckabee said. “A lot of the progressives don’t like her because she is essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of big corporations.

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“But a lot of other people don’t like her because [of] her extreme positions on economic issues; wanting higher taxes, wanting America to kind of take a back seat in the world and sign up for everything with the Paris climate accords that put us in a very tough position,” Huckabee continued. “Those are some of the things that make her, let’s just say, less than overwhelmingly popular even in her own party.”

The fate of Tanden, as well as many of Biden's other Cabinet nominees, depends on two Senate runoffs in Georgia next mont that will determine whether Republicans keep their majority in the upper chamber. If Democrats win both races, they would secure a 50-50 split in the upper chamber, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris able to cast tie-breaking votes. 

Fox News' Paul Steinhauser and Megan Henney contributed to this report.