One of the running criticisms of the Trump administration was how slowly it nominated and won confirmation for hundreds of high-level government officials, especially in critical agencies like the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.But things aren’t going much better with the Biden administration. And arguably, the situation is worse: In the middle of a pandemic, there is still no confirmed head of the Food and Drug Administration, and there is no confirmed ambassador to Afghanistan to help manage the crisis there.To understand what’s going on, I turned to Max Stier, the head of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that tracks vacancies and advises the government on how to improve the nomination and confirmation process.He made clear that while the Biden team was woefully behind, the problem was not unique to it — or to the Trump administration. Rather, he said, it’s typical of a broken system that has led to a long string of government failures.“You can go back in time, if it was the response to Hurricane Katrina under the Bush administration, or the botched rollout of healthcare.gov under the Obama administration, or any number of issues in the Trump administration,” he said. “There is an execution gap of consequence. And one of the big reasons for that is that the leadership system is broken.”A transcript of our interview, edited and condensed, follows.Where does the Biden administration stand in terms of its nominations and confirmations?There’s a set of 800 positions that we consider the most fundamental, and of those, they only have 127 that are confirmed, and they have 206 that are waiting in the queue. That still leaves a pretty substantial number that needs to be nominated.
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} catch (e) {>It’s hard to believe, but we’re past the seven-month mark in this administration. You have a Senate that operates like a two-lane country highway, and you have a big traffic jam because you’ve got legislative priorities and budget issues and judicial nominations.And why is this a problem? Don’t they have acting officials in place?When no one’s there, you do have someone in the acting role, but they’re the substitute teachers. They might be amazing educators, but we all know that the substitute teacher doesn’t get respect from the class, and they don’t see their job as taking on the long-term problems because they don’t know if they’ll be around tomorrow. What I’m painting for you is a broader system failure in our government. You wind up with workarounds like acting leadership, or in the last administration, an effort to simply avoid a confirmed leadership in many instances.Speaking of the last administration, how does President Biden’s record compare with Donald Trump’s?The Biden team is ahead in their nominations of where Trump was at this point in time, but they’re actually neck and neck in the number of confirmed people.It’s easy to see why the Senate could be a roadblock for confirmations, but what explains the lag in nominations?There’s an interrelationship between the two. One of the challenges any administration faces is thinking about the likelihood of getting people confirmed. A difficult confirmation process impacts the nomination process. There’s a lot of risk aversion. And, frankly, their ability to recruit is hurt. Think about all the people who would throw in their hat knowing they’ll be a part of that cool-your-jet package. Everything you do gets scrutinized enormously, and you have to be thoughtful and careful about what you shouldBy: Clay Risen
Title: Why Are So Many Government Positions Still Vacant?
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/us/politics/biden-cabinet-appointments.html
Published Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2021 22:30:04 +0000
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