The Biden administration has found ways to appoint several officials to influential posts within the government after the Senate denied their confirmations earlier in President Joe Biden’s first term.
The Senate failed to confirm Laura Daniel-Davis, Ann Carlson, Jeff Marootian and Neera Tanden, with Republicans generally citing their partisanship or radicalism, but the White House has found influential positions for them to assume within the government anyways. The administration has found ways to shoehorn these individuals into their current posts across the government by appointing Daniel-Davis and Carlson on an acting basis, while sticking Marootian and Tanden in positions that do not require a formal Senate confirmation process.
“The President is entitled to appoint individuals who are dedicated to implementing his agenda,” Pete McGinnis, a spokesman for the Functional Government Initiative, a government watchdog and transparency organization, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Of course, the Senate also has a constitutional role in ensuring that certain positions are filled with qualified individuals who will look out for America’s best interests. For that reason, it’s not surprising that many of President Biden’s most senior officials have run into roadblocks as his agenda faces greater transparency from outside watchdogs and genuine congressional oversight.” (RELATED: Over Half Of Americans Think The Biden Administration Has An Ethics Problem: POLL)
UNBELIEVABLE: President Biden has promoted far-left environmental activist & walking conflict of interest, Laura Daniel-Davis, to the 2nd highest @Interior post.
This is *after* she has already been rejected in the Democrat-controlled Senate for her current lesser position. pic.twitter.com/PuD0exXFP3
— Sen. Dan Sullivan (@SenDanSullivan) October 31, 2023
The Department of the Interior (DOI) announced Laura Daniel-Davis’ appointment as the agency’s deputy secretary on Tuesday following the departure of former Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau, who left the job following a climate activist pressure campaign against him. Daniel-Davis, a former employee of the National Wildlife Foundation and the Obama administration’s DOI, was nominated twice to be assistant secretary over land and minerals management, failing two votes in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to send her nomination to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote, according to E&E News.
Committee Republicans and Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin tanked her nominations because of concerns regarding her proximity to climate activism and her stance on key energy security issues, according to E&E News. Those concerns may have been well-founded, as the DOI mistakenly posted a memo to an agency website earlier this year that showed Daniel-Davis had suggested the Biden administration’s sweeping climate goals should take precedence over a lease sale crucial to Alaskan energy production.
“This appointment is yet another example of this administration disregarding Congress and elevating nominees when they are unable to get the bipartisan support needed for confirmation,” Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said of Daniel-Davis’ appointment to the position. “Their insistence on ignoring the confirmation process to advance their agenda undermines the role of the Senate and should be troubling to everyone.”
Ann Carlson, formerly a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, serves as the acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). She has served in the post on an acting basis since September 2022, and Senate Republicans tanked her formal nomination for the agency’s top job in May 2023, primarily pointing to her past comments about utilizing higher energy costs as a launching pad for the green energy transition. However, Biden has kept her in place despite the rejection and withdrawal of her nomination, thereby circumventing Senate approval.
Under Carlson’s leadership, the agency unveiled a proposed update to the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards in July which would impose stiff fines on auto manufacturers that fail to comply with NHTSA’s future fuel economy standards. The proposal amounts to a de facto electric vehicle mandate, Dan Kish, a senior fellow for the Institute for Energy Research, told the DCNF at the time. (RELATED: Liberal Groups Pressure Biden On His Top Officials’ Corporate Ties)
Sen. John Kennedy tells Neera Tanden on her old tweets:
“You called Senator Sanders everything but an ignorant slut.” pic.twitter.com/eYfPlSj2fm
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 10, 2021
Biden announced he would nominate Jeff Marootian, a close advisor to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, to serve as the assistant secretary for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) in July 2022. He failed to clear the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to make it to a floor vote, as Manchin held up his nomination to express his dismay with the Biden administration’s push to crack down on gas stoves.
Days after Biden formally withdrew Marootian’s nomination in September, he redeployed Marootian to be the principal deputy assistant secretary for the office, a position which does not require Senate confirmation, according to Politico. The job for which he was initially nominated remains unfilled, suggesting that Marootian is now the de facto leader of the office that is the source of many of the administration’s policies mandating more energy efficient and expensive appliances.
“For an administration that promised a return to normalcy and to be the most ethical in history, the Biden Administration sure seems willing to cast those principles aside when they interfere with policies and personnel often created by and coming from powerful special interests,” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, a government watchdog organization, told the DCNF. “Quaint notions like the Senate’s Constitutional advice and consent authority appear to be deprioritized or discarded, even elevating officials that have been rejected for confirmation multiple times already. This is hardly the way to win back the trust of the American public, especially from an administration that took office pledging to uphold such high ideals.”
Shortly after winning the 2020 presidential election, Biden said that he would nominate Neera Tanden, a Democratic Party insider that has formerly worked for numerous Democratic presidential campaigns, the Center for American Progress and helped to write the Affordable Care Act while working for the Obama administration, to head up the Office of Management and Budget. However, Tanden asked Biden to rescind her nomination after Manchin made clear that he would not support her confirmation in the evenly-divided Senate.
Biden appointed her to serve as a senior advisor to the president in May 2021, and subsequently appointed her to be the White House staff secretary that October. In May of this year, the administration announced that Tanden would take over for Susan Rice, another Democrat insider, as the Domestic Policy Council’s director. None of these positions require a Senate confirmation process.
The White House, the DOE, the DOI and NHTSA all did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
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