Bill aims to reduce the number of Senate confirmed positions

Agencies would have to submit plans to reduce their number of political positions requiring Senate confirmation under a bill aimed at streamlining the presidential appointments process. Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., introduced legislation Wednesday that would require agency heads to report to the President and Congress on the number of presidential appointees in their agencies and outline a plan for reducing those positions requiring Senate confirmation. Lieberman and Thompson are the chairman and ranking member of the Governmental Affairs Committee, respectively. There are about 3,000 political appointees working in the executive branch, but "they account for 25 percent to 40 percent of the formal and informal bureaucratic layers that are interposed between the President and the front lines of government," Paul C. Light, director of governmental studies and the Presidential Appointee Initiative at the Brookings Institution, told National Journal in June. Although reducing the number of political appointees was one of 11 recommendations Brookings made in April to speed up the long and often tedious confirmation process, the Lieberman-Thompson bill does not go that far. The bill instead aims to streamline the appointments process by reducing the number of positions requiring Senate confirmation. If the Lieberman-Thompson legislation is enacted, agency heads would have 180 days from its passage to submit their plans for reducing the number of Senate-confirmed positions. The bill, called the Presidential Appointments Improvement Act of 2001, would also simplify the financial disclosure form appointees are required to submit by consolidating reporting categories, for example. The proposed legislation would also improve public access to nominees' conflict of interest waivers. Lieberman said reducing nominees' financial paperwork would not compromise government ethics. "The legislation that we're introducing today will reduce some of the financial disclosure burdens placed on high-level, executive branch nominees, without reducing the information necessary to determine potential conflicts of interest, and without sacrificing the important principle of the public's right to know," Lieberman said. The bill directs the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department to review and report on criminal conflict of interest statutes. It also improves tracking of nominees' agreements to take financial actions, including selling certain securities, to avoid ethical conflicts while in office. Thompson and Lieberman also sponsored the Presidential Transition Act of 2000, which Congress passed in October 2000. The law provides for briefings and an orientation for political appointees, creates a transitions directory with important administrative information and information about agencies, and requires the Office of Government Ethics to report on burdensome disclosure requirements for appointees.

Despite the attention from lawmakers and several good government groups like Brookings, the appointments process has become more cumbersome and lengthy in recent years, Thompson said. "I think it took President Clinton about nine months to get his team into place [during his first term], and it will be well over 12 months before President Bush has his team together," he said. "We continue to add confirmable positions, and it has taken every succeeding President longer to get top people in place." According to Brookings, 297 of the 508 top political appointments have been confirmed as of Dec. 7, while 169 nominees have not yet received Senate approval. Some of the key antiterrorism jobs in government, including the director of the National Institutes of Health and the commissioner of food and drugs at the Health and Human Services Department, remain unfilled. Clarification: The Presidential Appointments Improvement Act of 2001 does not direct agencies to submit plans to reduce their number of actual political appointees, as GovExec.com previously reported. Instead, the bill seeks to streamline the appointments process by reducing the number of politically-appointed positions requiring Senate confirmation. GovExec.com regrets the error.