Here is one measure of how broken and slow-moving Washington is: Left unchecked, the next President-elect will have to wait an average of six months to have appointments requiring U.S. Senate confirmation to get an up or down vote.
The failure to staff these 1,300 or so senior-level positions (no one knows the exact number – another sign of brokenness) leads to enormous waste and inefficiencies. And many of these officials whom President Biden nominated, will be sticking around for quite a while, some into 2026.
These senior-level appointees are responsible for managing trillions of dollars in federal spending, the work of 4.4 million federal civilian and military personnel, and a bevy of contractors. The current quagmire also chases away many of the best and brightest from government service.
Even in the best of times, it is hard to attract quality people to senior positions in government, which will often involve a substantial pay cut and moving the family a great distance. Add to this a six-month or more uncertainty about when and whether the job will start, and many decline such nominations.
This is a major issue that the President-elect should address immediately and forcefully. First, though, let’s examine how things have trended and why they have gotten this bad.
In U.S. Senate testimony on July 30, 2024, Jenny Mattingley, Vice President of Government Affairs for the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, said, “In President Reagan’s first term, it took an average of 49 days to confirm his nominees. For President Trump, it soared to an average of 160 days, and now, for the first term to date for President Biden, that average is 182 days, an almost four times increase.”
Keep in mind that the 182 days for President Biden happened at a time when Democrats controlled the Senate.
Ms. Mattingley also testified that “between 1960 and 2020, the number of Senate-confirmed positions increased by over 70 percent, from 779 to around 1,340.”
While there are more nominees to consider, the central reason for the delay in confirmations is political gamesmanship by Senators wishing to wield power and sloppy processes that delay votes. This was exemplified by Senator Josh Hawley placing a hold on three nominees to serve as U.S. Federal Trade Commissioners this year.
The President-elect will serve the country well by energetically breaking this sluggish paradigm.
Step one is to recognize and take to heart the seriousness of the problem.
Step two is to direct staff to immediately develop a list of qualified, interested nominees for these positions no later than early January.
Step three is to use the bully pulpit of The White House, and whatever mandate for change can be mustered, to demand up or down votes on all nominees no later than 40 days after they are submitted to the U.S. Senate.
Top priority should be given to pivotal positions from a national security and economic standpoint. The Departments of Defense, State, Justice, and Commerce, as well as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), are especially important.
The controversy surrounding FTC Chair Lina Khan, a progressive who has been the tip of the spear for many of the Biden Administration’s most anti-business and controversial policies, illustrates the need for overhauling the appointments process.
Chair Khan’s current term was supposed to expire on September 25. For whatever reason, President Biden did not nominate her to another seven-year term.
This could be due to an oversight (negligence), a desire to not subject Chair Khan to Senate questioning under oath that typically occurs in these situations, or to give the Administration the best of both worlds: keep Chair Khan in and appease progressives while holding out the possibility that she will eventually be gone as several major donors of Vice President Harris have called publicly called for.
In any event, by law, Chair Khan can stick around in the position as long as she wants, provided she does not commit a crime or is not derelict in her public duties. A slow-moving Trump or Harris Administration could easily see Chair Khan in office until 2026. Many other officials have a one-year holdover, or time limit if a replacement is not nominated and confirmed.
Prioritizing appointments is also important because the federal government has gotten so big that no one knows how many Presidential appointments there are.
In a September 26 blog, “Presidential appointments are hard to track – and growing,” the Partnership for Public Service discussed how it has written for years that “new presidents generally fill more than 1,200 positions, while another leading authority, Vanderbilt Professor David Lewis, had compiled a list of 1,340 Senate positions. The primary reason for this seems to be that roughly 140 positions are chronically unfilled. That could be an indication that many such positions should also be eliminated.
Senator Gary Peters, Chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, could not provide a definitive number when introducing legislation this fall to build a public database to track such appointments.
While the database is a likely positive step, the President and the U.S. Senate need to get back to the basics: be timely about finding and voting on quality people. CEOs and Board of Directors do this regularly, and the Senate and President, with their already vast staff and other resources can move with much greater speed.
