Zippyjuan
06-07-2017, 02:05 PM
http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/07/news/economy/trump-staffing-vacancies/index.html
Many jobs are "temporarily" still being filled by Obama appointments.
President Trump has roughly 1,100 top-tier positions to fill across his administration.
So far, he's nominated only 111 of them.
No president in modern history has fallen so far behind in naming heads of agencies, assistant secretaries, ambassadors and other critical leadership roles that require Senate approval.
As of Tuesday, only 41 of Trump's 111 nominees have cleared the Senate, according to data compiled by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan, nonprofit that has tracked presidential appointments since 1989.
In the first four months of their administrations, former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush each named more than 200 nominees, with more than half of them approved by the Senate.
The failure to fill these top roles undermines the president's ability to delivery on his policy agenda -- including his ambitious tax reform plan and vow to overhaul health care. Without critical leadership in place, agencies can be left rudderless.
The personnel shortage comes while the White House is dealing with an investigation into Russia's alleged role in the 2016 election. The longer it takes the administration to fill top posts, the more it risks failing to ever catch up to its staffing needs.
"Even if they started naming people at the rate they wanted to, they are now competing against other legislative priorities," said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, citing raising the debt limit, tax reform, and healthcare. "The longer you wait, the harder it gets."
Some of the president's top picks have pulled out after being nominated. Among them: Andrew Puzder to be labor secretary and Jim Donovan to serve as the No. 2 official at the Treasury Department. Vincent Viola and Mark Green both declined to become the next Army secretary. And Todd Ricketts also withdrew his name to be deputy commerce secretary.
The sluggish pace of getting political appointees on the job is emblematic of a much wider problem across the administration, which experts argue wasn't equipped to kick off a hiring blitz. All told, the president has about 4,000 hires to make, including the 1,100 that require Senate confirmation.
"It's a failure to understand the operating needs of the government," said Stier, who worked with the Trump campaign on potential appointments. "I think there wasn't an appreciation that running a successful campaign would require a different approach in running a successful government versus a successful business."
Several agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are now operating without full boards, effectively undermining their ability to move forward with Trump's campaign promise to loosen financial regulations.
Many jobs are "temporarily" still being filled by Obama appointments.
President Trump has roughly 1,100 top-tier positions to fill across his administration.
So far, he's nominated only 111 of them.
No president in modern history has fallen so far behind in naming heads of agencies, assistant secretaries, ambassadors and other critical leadership roles that require Senate approval.
As of Tuesday, only 41 of Trump's 111 nominees have cleared the Senate, according to data compiled by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan, nonprofit that has tracked presidential appointments since 1989.
In the first four months of their administrations, former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush each named more than 200 nominees, with more than half of them approved by the Senate.
The failure to fill these top roles undermines the president's ability to delivery on his policy agenda -- including his ambitious tax reform plan and vow to overhaul health care. Without critical leadership in place, agencies can be left rudderless.
The personnel shortage comes while the White House is dealing with an investigation into Russia's alleged role in the 2016 election. The longer it takes the administration to fill top posts, the more it risks failing to ever catch up to its staffing needs.
"Even if they started naming people at the rate they wanted to, they are now competing against other legislative priorities," said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, citing raising the debt limit, tax reform, and healthcare. "The longer you wait, the harder it gets."
Some of the president's top picks have pulled out after being nominated. Among them: Andrew Puzder to be labor secretary and Jim Donovan to serve as the No. 2 official at the Treasury Department. Vincent Viola and Mark Green both declined to become the next Army secretary. And Todd Ricketts also withdrew his name to be deputy commerce secretary.
The sluggish pace of getting political appointees on the job is emblematic of a much wider problem across the administration, which experts argue wasn't equipped to kick off a hiring blitz. All told, the president has about 4,000 hires to make, including the 1,100 that require Senate confirmation.
"It's a failure to understand the operating needs of the government," said Stier, who worked with the Trump campaign on potential appointments. "I think there wasn't an appreciation that running a successful campaign would require a different approach in running a successful government versus a successful business."
Several agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are now operating without full boards, effectively undermining their ability to move forward with Trump's campaign promise to loosen financial regulations.