{"id":8808,"date":"2019-02-22T09:37:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T14:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opsweb.wpengine.com\/?p=8808"},"modified":"2020-10-21T16:10:56","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T20:10:56","slug":"why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do presidential nominees languish in the Senate?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>On\nFeb. 17, President Trump started his day with a tweet decrying the slow pace of\nSenate confirmations, a familiar refrain for a president who has vacancies across\nhis administration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nPartnership for Public Service, with The Washington Post, tracks approximately\n700 key executive branch positions that require Senate confirmation. As of Feb.\n19, nearly 40 percent of them were either vacant or filled with acting\nofficials.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\nwas no official nominee for 147 of these positions, and there were nominees\nawaiting Senate confirmation for another 128 positions. Trump nominees have\nwaited 107 days on average from nomination to confirmation, and some nominees\nhave waited more than a year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Filling\npositions subject to Senate confirmation is a shared responsibility, and the\nprocess is complicated. Various White House offices help the president select\nnominees; the FBI conducts background investigations; and the Office of\nGovernment Ethics advises nominees on avoiding conflicts of interest. Agencies\nhelp their nominees navigate the entire process, and the nominees play an essential\nrole by providing timely information. Much of this happens before the nomination\nis ever sent to the Senate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once the president formally submits a nomination to the Senate, the committee of jurisdiction usually holds a confirmation hearing. Senators question the nominee and then vote on forwarding the nomination to the full Senate for consideration. However, nominees increasingly linger without receiving a vote, either in committee or on the floor.&nbsp;Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Paperwork\u2014and lots of it:<\/strong> Nominees must fill out multiple forms with duplicative information and answer dozens or even hundreds of policy questions. The Senate will not act until the paperwork is complete and accurate. <\/li><li><strong>So many positions, so little time: <\/strong>More than 1,200 executive branch positions require confirmation\u2014more than the Senate can consider during the roughly 190 days it is in session each year. Nominees compete with each other, legislation and other business for scarce committee and floor time. In 2012, Congress decreased the number of positions that require Senate confirmation but has since created new ones. A separate track created for <a>noncontroversial nominations has done little to speed the process.<\/a><\/li><li><strong>Nominees as bargaining chips: <\/strong>Any senator can place a \u201chold\u201d on a nominee to\nextract concessions from the administration on matters unrelated to the nominee\u2019s\nqualifications. Taken to an extreme, some senators may see political gain in objecting\nto virtually every nominee. <\/li><li><strong>A system not built for speed: <\/strong>Senate rules and norms make speedy confirmations\nrare. Invoking \u201ccloture\u201d to limit debate on a nomination still allows for 30\nhours of debate time, and a Rules Committee proposal to reduce debate time to two\nhours for most nominees is opposed by the minority party. A separate rule sends\nall pending nominations back to the president at the end of a Congress so they must\nbe resubmitted in the next. In January, the Trump administration resubmitted\n113 nominations for key leadership positions that expired at the end of the\n115th Congress. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Agencies need talented political\nappointees to lead organizations and be accountable to Congress. Senators must\nwork together to confirm qualified appointees and consider reforms to make the\nprocess run smoothly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Feb. 17, President Trump started his day with a tweet decrying the slow pace of Senate confirmations, a familiar refrain for a president who has vacancies across his administration. The Partnership for Public Service, with The Washington Post, tracks approximately 700 key executive branch positions that require Senate confirmation. As of Feb. 19, nearly&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":11328,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sort-date":"","content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7595],"tags":[9190,9176,9192,9191],"class_list":["post-8808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presidential-transition","tag-presidential-nominees","tag-senate","tag-transition","tag-washington-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.2 (Yoast SEO v26.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why do presidential nominees languish in the Senate? &#8226; Partnership for Public Service<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Many of the Trump administration&#8217;s nominees have yet to be confirmed by the Senate. Why does it take so long? The answer has a lot to do with Senate rules and norms.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why do presidential nominees languish in the Senate?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Partnership for Public Service is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that strives for a more effective government for the American people.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Partnership for Public Service\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/partnershipforpublicservice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-02-22T14:37:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-10-21T20:10:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/capitol-night.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1289\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"649\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@RPublicService\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@RPublicService\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"\",\"@id\":\"\"},\"headline\":\"Why do presidential nominees languish in the Senate?\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-02-22T14:37:30+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-10-21T20:10:56+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/\"},\"wordCount\":516,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/capitol-night.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"presidential nominees\",\"Senate\",\"transition\",\"Washington Post\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Presidential Transition\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/blog\/why-do-presidential-nominees-languish-in-the-senate\/\",\"name\":\"Why do presidential nominees languish in the Senate? 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