Obama Administration: Key Jobs Remain Vacant

USAToday reported November 10 that several key job postings in the administration of President Barack Obama remain unfilled. The story reports:

"Medicare may be cut and Medicaid expanded as part of President Obama's health care plan, but there's no one permanently in charge of the two federal programs. Diplomacy may be replacing military might as Obama's foreign policy of choice, but there's no new leader at the Agency for International Development. Concerned about illegal immigration? No one's been confirmed to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection. And as drugs and guns are flowing in from Mexico, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives still need bosses."

All told there are almost 200 key administration positions that remain vacant as the President approaches his one year mark in office. The cause: according to USAToday, it's a combination of stalled nominations, new ethics rules, lengthy background checks and delays in Senate confirmations.

I don't get it. Doesn't he President have folks working on the nominations and providing him with candidates? Surely they started looking at these postings between the election and the President's inauguration, right? I don't buy the ethics rules bit either. The President has not hesitated to waive his new ethics rules for folks he's wanted in his administration, including the number two guy at the Defense Department, former Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn. Background checks? Okay, I'll give him that one. There's nothing he can do about that except beef up the staff at the investigative service doing the checks, something those folks have been asking for for years. Finally, the delays in Senate confirmation don't wash either. The President's party controls the Senate and he could push through just about any nomination he wanted.

USAToday says, "More than half the vacancies are at five departments: Justice, State, Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security. 'Those are pretty significant policy jobs, and ones that the public ought to be concerned about,' says New York University professor Paul Light, an expert on the federal bureaucracy. 'Obama is well on pace right now to set a new record in terms of lateness.'"

Probably not the kind of record he anticipated setting, I'm sure.

The story says, "The backlog has put Obama behind his predecessors in the time it's taking to fill out the government. The Senate has confirmed 366 nominees, compared with 421 at this point for the George W. Bush administration, 379 for Bill Clinton and 480 for Ronald Reagan, according to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Reid blames Republicans for the backlog, noting individual GOP senators have held up many of Obama's nominees as bargaining chips on other issues."

Of course he does. It's quite fashionable to blame Republicans for everything these days.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-11-09-obama-jobs-unfilled_N.htm