An Empty Government Cannot Govern

It should be one point on which every American agrees.

Amid a national crisis, the President of the United States is entitled to have a senior team in place to lead a response. But the confirmation process for cabinet secretaries and other senior political appointees is a mess. It resulted in our government being unprepared and understaffed in the wake of both 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis, and now we’re running the same risk amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The problem is complicated. Some of it stems from obstruction from minority party senators putting holds on nominees or just reflexively voting against them (Sen. Josh Hawley, for example, has voted against every Biden cabinet nominee). Sometimes new administrations aren’t properly prepared. And even in the best of times, executive branch appointees are subjected to a burdensome and drawn out compliance and confirmation process.

This problem needs to be fixed. Here The New Center takes a look at confirmation mistakes prior to 9/11 and 2008, in the hopes we won’t make these same mistakes again.

On 9/11, over nine months into the new Bush administration, 43 percent of Senate-confirmed positions at the Department of Justice, the Pentagon, and the Department of State were unfilled. The combination of the Bush administration taking months to select nominees and the Senate taking even more time to confirm them resulted in the vacancy of 12 high-level positions at the Department of Defense and others in the security infrastructure, such as the Department of State and relevant positions at the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, Robert Mueller had only led the FBI for one week before having to mobilize the entire bureau to investigate and help prosecute the perpetrators of 9/11 and combat future terrorist threats.

Even after the September 11 attacks, it still took months for many of these national security positions to get filled. The 9-11 Commission identified this leadership gap as a major national security vulnerability and advised that future presidential administrations have their national security choices finalized by inauguration day and for the Senate to vote on these individuals within a 30-day period. This advice has been ignored.

In 2008, Americans faced a crisis of a much different sort, but once again our government was short-staffed. In March 2009, then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner oversaw massive lending and assistance programs and was working to revive the U.S. financial system and economy — but he was doing so with scant help. Despite having been confirmed in January 2009, Geithner was working without half the Senate-confirmed senior staff he needed in March and lacked a Deputy Secretary of the Treasury until the confirmation of Neal Wolin that May. Both he and his staff were functioning on only a couple of hours of sleep per night.

Though the Obama administration had the support of 60 Democratic senators, which one would assume would clear the way for quick and efficient confirmations, many nominees got bogged down in interminable background checks and paperwork. The Obama administration was doing expanded vetting for many nominees and several of them, such as Commerce Secretary nominee Penny Pritzker, just bowed out due to the probing nature of the process. 

Seven months into Obama’s administration, only 43 percent of the top 500 policymaking positions had been filled, with glaring vacancies at the Transportation Security Administration, the Customs and Border Protection agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. 

Even in instances where agency and department leadership positions were filled promptly, these leaders were often forced to run a skeleton crew without other Senate-confirmed nominees as deputies and undersecretaries. As the Biden administration now reckons with the health and economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Senate and the administration will need to work with much more urgency to ensure we don’t repeat the same mistakes that hamstrung our government’s response post 9/11 and 2008.

Tom Rollins is a policy intern with The New Center.