Only 36 Percent of Biden's Nominees Have Been Confirmed As Holds Slow Process

More than nine months into his administration, just 36 percent of President Joe Biden's nominees have been confirmed by a deeply and evenly divided Senate, the Associated Press reported. Senators have been placing holds on nominees to slow down the process, gain public attention and attempt to have some of their political demands met by the administration.

For example, Florida Senator Rick Scott placed holds on all Homeland Security Department nominees until Vice President Kamala Harris made a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley placed holds on all State and Defense Department nominees as he called for the secretaries of those departments to resign following the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the AP reported.

While holds don't completely stop nominees from being confirmed, they do add extra steps to the confirmation process, and for the slow-moving Senate. Barriers like holds consume time from an already-crunched calendar, forcing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to decide what the chamber will and won't vote for, according to the AP.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.

The trend is alarming to good government advocates, who say Washington's ability to meet mounting challenges is being undermined by gaps in leadership. But the slow-walking shows no signs of letting up as senators place holds on a wide swath of nominees to gain leverage and attract public attention.

While gridlock isn't new, the struggle to staff administrations is getting worse. During the first nine months of the Bush and Obama administrations, the Senate required fewer than 10 percent of their nominees to advance through time-hogging cloture votes aimed at limiting debate. But Democrats increased that to 40 percent under former President Donald Trump. Republicans have responded in kind, ramping it up to more than 50 percent under Biden, according to White House data.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there have been "unprecedented delays, obstruction, holds on qualified individuals from Republicans in the Senate." And that, she said, is thwarting the confirmation of ambassadors and economic and national security officials.

"The blame is clear," Psaki said. "It is frustrating."

Holds tell only part of the story, though. The number of positions requiring Senate confirmation keeps growing — from fewer than 800 when Dwight Eisenhower was president to more than 1,200 now. That means more competition for the Senate's time and attention.

"Our system is broken," said Max Stier, the CEO of the Partnership for Public Service. "We have a Senate that was designed for a different era, the equivalent of the country road and the world around it has become a major urban center and it can't manage the traffic that is now trying to go down it."

Stier's organization provides information and training aimed at making government employees more effective. He said delays in filling key government posts make it harder to respond to problems such as the pandemic, the economic fallout that came from it, climate change and foreign threats such as those from China, Russia and North Korea.

"We face an extraordinary set of challenges and our government is our one tool as a society to deal with these big problems," Stier said.

His organization recommends that Congress reduce the number of positions requiring Senate confirmation and give nominees a quicker vote.

"There are legitimate reasons why the Senate would reject a nominee," Stier said. "But the key point here is they ought to be giving them the up-and-down vote fast — not what is happening now."

Senators seem unlikely to relent. Holding up a nominee is a rare chance to gain the administration's attention and perhaps change its course of action. At other times, it gives them an opportunity to make a statement that resonates with their party's voters.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has been a longtime opponent of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which he says will increase Europe's reliance on Russia for its energy. The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Russian companies and ships for their work on the project, but opted not to punish the German company overseeing it.

Cruz's office said the senator is committed to using whatever leverage he has to force "mandatory sanctions."

"He believes that those sanctions can still prevent Nord Stream 2 from coming online and that the Biden administration can be convinced to implement them," Cruz's office said.

Hawley, meanwhile, has demanded that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin resign because of the "botched Afghanistan withdrawal."

"Until there is accountability, the least we can do is actually vote for nominees to leadership positions at the State Department and Department of Defense," Hawley said in a statement.

Without the holds, the nominees could be confirmed through a voice vote, a process taking only minutes that can be used so long as no senators object. That's how more than 90 percent of nominees were confirmed at similar stages of the Bush and Obama presidencies.

There is one bright spot for Biden. He is eclipsing other presidents when it comes to confirming judicial nominees. The Senate has confirmed 16 district and circuit court judges as of October 13, matching the combined total for Bush, Obama and Trump by that date.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas of the Brookings Institution noted that Obama was criticized for not moving quickly enough on judges. "It's clear to me the Biden people have learned from that mistake," she said.

"I mean, would you rather have life-tenured people get through or would you have people who are going to probably stay on average for 18 to 24 months in these jobs?" Tenpas said.

During the Trump presidency, it was Republicans who voiced frustration with Democratic tactics to slow the confirmation process. Republican leader Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader, led a change in the chamber's rules that shrank how long the chamber could debate a nominee.

In recent weeks, McConnell has repeatedly criticized Democrats for dedicating so much of the Senate's time to what he described as "mid-level nominations." Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., scoffed at the criticism.

"The reason we have to go through every step, dot every I, cross every T and listen to interminable speeches unrelated to the nominee is his caucus's decision to slow this process down," Durbin said.

Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the confirmation process has been a problem for both parties serving in the majority "when everything is so polarized around here."

"I'm hoping this is just an ugly phase," he said.