President-elect and Senate urged to hasten appointments

Two former government leaders Tuesday urged the President-elect and the Senate leadership to move beyond the divisive presidential election and work together to hasten the appointments process. In a letter to some of the nation's top officials, former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, R-Kan., and former director of the Office of Management and Budget Franklin Raines, encouraged the President-elect to deliver his nominations to the Senate as soon as possible, and asked the Senate to expedite confirmation reviews and hold a confirmation vote on appointees within 45 days of the nomination. The appointments process involves a maze of requirements, including financial background reports, FBI checks and congressional scrutiny that can turn downright nasty. "Under the best of circumstances, a presidential transition is a difficult enterprise. In this transition, with the additional time constraints imposed by the delayed conclusion of the election, the task of staffing the new administration will be especially challenging," said Kassebaum Baker and Raines in their letter to President Clinton, Gov. George W. Bush, Vice President Al Gore, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. Kassebaum Baker and Raines are co-chairs of the Presidential Appointee Initiative, a project of the Brookings Institution that seeks to revamp the appointments process and provide practical information and advice to nominees. The letter advised the President-elect to deliver between 25 and 30 nominations a week for executive positions in the administration in the months after the inauguration, and urged the Senate to review and confirm those nominations as soon as possible, limiting any holds on nominations to two weeks. Kassebaum Baker and Raines also suggested that the President-elect designate staff members to work with the Senate on personnel issues and said the Senate should consider extending all current term appointments that expired after Nov. 7 for three months. "This is about improving and expediting the process now," said Kassebaum Baker. She said both Republicans and Democrats need to "work across the aisle" to speed up the presidential appointments and confirmation process to help get the new administration in place, but also to demonstrate bipartisanship.

In April, the Brookings Institution and the Heritage Foundation released a study of current and former political appointees that found most nominees endure a long, drawn-out, tortuous and stressful process to enter public service. The survey included 435 senior-level appointees of the Clinton, Bush and Reagan administrations.

Forty percent of respondents called the process confusing, and 23 percent said it was embarrassing. Senate confirmation drew the most ire among the steps of the process.