President-elect Donald Trump's request to adjourn the Senate to allow top Senate appointees to take office without confirmation votes amounts to a complete abdication of Congress' constitutional advice and consent responsibilities. This increases the likelihood that unvetted and unqualified individuals will fill key government positions. work.
The Senate has a duty to independently evaluate and vote on presidential appointees to protect the public interest, but Mr. Trump has legitimate concerns about confirming his nominees in a timely manner.
The confirmation system is clearly broken, with the Senate routinely taking too long to review and vote on presidential appointees, and this problem worsening over time, with concerns ranging from national security to public health and safety. Important positions in these areas remain vacant for long periods of time. .
The number of political appointees subject to Senate confirmation (more than 1,300) has increased by more than 70 percent since 1960, and the average time to confirm a nominee has nearly quadrupled since the Reagan administration, to about 49 It's been 191 days since then for President Joe Biden. As of Aug. 2, according to an analysis by my organization, the Partnership for Public Service.
In addition to preventing qualified candidates from running for office, this system also fails in the Senate itself. Incredibly, votes on nominations now outnumber votes on bills in the Senate. Votes on personnel issues (procedural votes, cloture votes to end debate, direct votes on nominations, etc.) accounted for an overwhelming 64% of all Senate votes recorded during President Trump's first term. During President Biden's term, it accounted for 59% as of August.
Additionally, the President and Senate simply don't have time to fill all these positions, so many positions remain vacant for years, and in my organization, 80 positions open More than 50% of the period from 2009 to 2023.
This broken process creates an incentive for the administration to bypass the Senate and appoint unconfirmed officials to temporary positions. Moreover, other presidents have also relied on recess appointments, but generally only after formally nominating someone and then getting mired in the Senate.
The recess appointments requested by President Trump are clearly not in the national interest. These would allow appointees to bypass not only the initial background check but also the important FBI background check. Office of Government Ethics” Rigorous review of conflicts of interest. That would rob the Senate of its ability to determine whether nominees are committed to the public interest rather than private interests and whether they can effectively manage large, complex organizations that are vital to U.S. interests. You will be killed.
Rather than abdicating these responsibilities, the Senate should take steps to restore the healthy balance established by the Founders, with the president nominating and the Senate providing advice and consent.
First, senators would need to reduce the number of positions subject to confirmation. This would strengthen, rather than undermine, the Senate's advice and consent function by allowing the Senate to focus on the most important high-level positions that require scrutiny by the Senate's responsibilities and powers. Probably. It would also be easier for the president to appoint individuals to other positions.
Second, we should introduce procedural reforms in the Senate so that, for example, a single senator cannot single-handedly stall the confirmation process. We need new ideas. For example, Senate majority leaders could make the process more manageable by allowing groups of candidates to go to the floor for a single vote, rather than requiring time for separate votes. Must be. The Senate could also streamline the nomination process in a way recommended more than a decade ago by a bipartisan Congressional Task Force.
Third, the Senate should reform its rules regarding nomination returns. Under rules dating back to 1868, the Senate returns pending nominations to the president at the end of a session or when the Senate adjourns for more than 30 days, unless all 100 senators agree to waive the rules. Renominations trigger a restart of the process, delaying the progress of nominees to a final vote in the Senate even if they have already been approved by a competent committee. The Senate would either have to limit the rule's application to the end of the two-year legislative session or increase the number of senators needed to block the rule's exemption.
Alexander Hamilton writes in the Federalist Papers that the Senate confirmation process serves as a safeguard against the appointment of “unqualified” officials and a check against those who abuse power or seek to pursue private interests over the public interest. I wrote that it functions as These words are as true today as they were in the 1700s.
The public interest is best served by fixing the current system, and it cannot be run wild.
Max Stier is president and CEO of the nonpartisan nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which focuses on building better government and stronger democracies.
