As the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) within the Executive Office of the President, Shalanda Young has overseen the development and execution of the federal government’s massive budget since 2021. During an October 22 event hosted by NYU Law’s Tax Law Center, Young engaged in a candid conversation about the complexities of her role with moderators Lily Batchelder, Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Taxation, and David Kamin ’09, Charles L. Denison Professor of Law, both faculty co-directors of the Tax Law Center.
Young, a Cabinet member and the first Black woman to direct OMB, was a Presidential Management Fellow at the National Institutes of Health before spending 14 years working for the US House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, eventually being promoted to staff director. In 2021, she became acting director of OMB before the Senate confirmed her as director the following year.
While OMB often flies under the radar as part of the nitty-gritty of government workings, its mission has tremendous significance. Introducing Young, Dean Troy McKenzie ’00 described OMB as “in some ways the controller of the circulatory system of the federal government. If you want to think of the heart, the arteries, the lungs, that really is OMB.”
Young succinctly summarized OMB’s importance and its link to her time with the Appropriations Committee: “If it’s important, you invest in it and it finds its way into a budget that finds its way into an appropriations bill.” But, she reminded the audience, the M in OMB—management—is also a major aspect of her duties. Young has had to issue guidance for federal workers on returning to the office after the introduction of the COVID-19 vaccine, and for agencies on how to use AI safely and responsibly—an especially timely issue.
“I wake up in the morning and I might talk about AI management guidance,” said Young. “I go to sleep wondering how we’re going to get this Ukraine loan done and how much subsidy costs I need. If you like to know a little about a lot, come on over to OMB, because we get to touch a lot of stuff, except for when Treasury doesn’t want us to touch their tax policy.” (That last wry aside elicited laughter from Batchelder, who recently served as assistant secretary of tax policy in the Treasury Department.)
Young’s most public moment came in 2023 when she was one of the primary negotiators who helped avert a looming debt-ceiling crisis, helping to strike a deal that yielded the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. She recalled running out of clean clothes during the round-the-clock process and having to run to Nordstrom Rack for something to wear.
“I think budget debt-ceiling shutdowns gain a lot of attention when they come up,” said Young. “But I think it’s more of a symptom of a larger illness in our political process”—an increasing inability to reach bipartisan compromise. She added, “It’s hard to fix a process that functions based on whether there is political will or not.”
While expressing concern about the tax burdens placed on the middle class as opposed to the very wealthiest in the US, Young underscored also how much she has enjoyed her job at OMB during the Biden administration: “I lucked up into a career and a place where a lot of good could be done, and it fit my skill sets and my personality. I like what I do. I don’t know if I have any other skills other than budget negotiation. I don't know how this translates. I’ll figure it out. But I found something I loved and I rode it as far as I could.”
Posted December 20, 2024