Your subscription makes our work possible.
We want to bridge divides to reach everyone.
Subscribe
Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, sat down with reporters at a Monitor breakfast to speak about a potential government shutdown and the need for bipartisan trust in budget negotiations.
|
Troy Sambajon/The Christian Science Monitor
Shalanda Young, left, director of the Office of Management and Budgeting, speaks with the Monitor’s Washington Bureau Chief, Linda Feldmann, and reporters at a Monitor Breakfast on January 5, 2024, at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C.
By Linda Feldmann
Staff Writer
January 11, 2024
|
Washington
We were delighted to welcome President Joe Biden’s budget director, Shalanda Young, to her first Monitor Breakfast on Jan 5. The timing couldn’t have been better. Congressional Republicans and Democrats are deep in negotiations to prevent a two-phase government shutdown, set to start Jan. 19.
Ms. Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, is in the loop. And while she’s not directly involved in negotiations, her southern Louisiana roots may yet prove beneficial. GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson is also from Louisiana, so I asked Ms. Young if that could help.
“Well, he’s from the north part of the state,” the OMB director deadpanned, to reporters’ laughter. But, she added, Speaker Johnson went to Louisiana State University and “my mother’s an LSU grad, so I’ll give him that.”
Ms. Young got high marks as a “quietly essential figure” in the May debt ceiling talks. Her years of work as a Capitol Hill staffer on budget matters certainly helped, but as a White House official, her ability to earn bipartisan trust has set her apart. Today, she’s still getting to know the new speaker.
“Those personal relationships do matter. And whatever it takes to get through these next few weeks, we are willing to do it,” Ms. Young says. “Being from the great state of Louisiana, one finds common ground quickly.’
We had a packed room for the breakfast, including C-SPAN cameras, and generated lots of media coverage.
After the breakfast ended, I couldn’t resist asking about Ms. Young’s toddler daughter and 95-year-old grandmother. Grandma is “still sharp and still ornery,” she said. “The two-year-old reminds me a lot of her. And they kind of don’t get along!”
The room exploded with laughter. “How can a 95-year-old not get along with a two-year-old?” I asked.
“Because my grandmother is like the center of everything,” Ms. Young said. “And now we’ve got this new baby. And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, are you competing for attention?’”
Perhaps Ms. Young’s bipartisan skills can come in handy at home.
You’ve read of free articles.
Subscribe to continue.
Help fund Monitor journalism for $11/ month
Already a subscriber? Login
Mark Sappenfield
Editor
Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.
Our work isn’t possible without your support.
Unlimited digital access $11/month.
Already a subscriber? Login
Digital subscription includes:
Unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
CSMonitor.com archive.
The Monitor Daily email.
No advertising.
Cancel anytime.
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2024/0111/Getting-to-know-Biden-s-budget-director-over-breakfast
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe
>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : The Christian Science Monitor – https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2024/0111/Getting-to-know-Biden-s-budget-director-over-breakfast?icid=rss