With four more executive-branch nominees confirmed this week, the Senate has now confirmed 33 of President Joe Biden’s selections to key executive-branch positions, as tracked by the Washington Post and the Partnership for Public Service. That still leaves hundreds of positions open, but overall he appears headed toward one of the best marks over the last 40 years.
The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition said in a new report that despite the vast challenges, the Biden team executed “one of the most extensively planned transitions, as well as the first-ever virtual transition.”
The Partnership for Public Service’ Center for Presidential Transition, a nonpartisan group that works with presidential transition teams from both parties during the election year, is out with a new report on Biden’s transition, calling it “one of the most well-planned transitions in history.”
Fifty-eight Trump administration appointees sought conversion from Jan. 1, 2020, to Jan 20, 2021, according to the Office of Personnel Management documents. “You can see in the number of non-approvals by OPM that there are a bunch of political appointees [who sought career jobs] that are clearly problematic,” Max Stier, CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, said. “Why are these people only coming into these jobs only after the candidate who wanted them there has lost?”
As President Joe Biden approaches his 100th day in office, he has yet to fill a number of key positions throughout the federal government, which former officials and advocacy groups warn could hobble agencies responsible for the influx of migrants at the border to the safety of Covid-19 vaccines. These jobs are temporarily being filled by officials limited by their acting capacity– meaning meaning a number of agencies and departments may have no permanent leaders through the summer.
President Joe Biden is confronting an influx of migrants at the southern U.S. border without permanent leaders at key agencies that oversee immigration enforcement and shelters, threatening to hamper the administration’s response to a growing crisis. Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Services, said the Biden administration accelerated agency appointments during the transition because it foresaw a slow Senate confirmation process.
There are about 1,200 Senate-confirmed posts Biden must fill. Biden has submitted 68 names to the Senate, according to the Partnership for Public Service. Max Stier, the Partnership’s CEO, said it’s not especially useful to compare Biden to his predecessors because every recent president had barely scratched the surface on his 66th day in office.
With his Cabinet confirmed and a significant share of other senior appointments in place, President Biden is on track to achieve something never before seen in the U.S. — an administration with a majority of senior positions filled by women. “A diverse workforce produces better results for organizations,” Max Stier said.
After two months in office, U.S. President Joe Biden has yet to name nominees for hundreds of senior national security positions across the federal government. Some American officials have begun ringing alarm bells about how all those empty posts—filled in acting capacities by lower-level, career government officials—will affect national security decision-making.
President Biden has yet to name hundreds of administration officials requiring Senate confirmation to military, diplomatic and intelligence posts, making it unlikely that his security agencies will be fully staffed until fall, officials say. Of more than 300 positions in the State Department, Pentagon, DHS and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Biden administration has nominated 16, according to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.