New data shows why it's taking the Senate longer to confirm presidential appointees

President Joe Biden’s nominees spent an average of 121 days in committee and 70 days on the Senate floor before being confirmed. That’s twice as long in committee and 15 times longer on the floor on average compared with George H.W. Bush’s nominations, according to a report published Wednesday by the Partnership for Public Service. 

“As Senate confirmation delays increase, pinpointing the areas of delay is important in understanding potential areas for reform so that new presidents, including returning President Trump, may quickly fill their leadership teams and qualified nominees for executive leadership positions to continue to serve the American public,” wrote Husam AlZubaidy, the report’s author. 

During Donald Trump’s first term in office, it took an average of 160.5 days to confirm his nominees. Ahead of his second administration, the president-elect has pushed the Senate to permit him to make appointments with recess authority. Under that authority, a president can appoint an individual for up to two years to a position that would normally require Senate confirmation if the chamber is in recess for a certain amount of time. 

The Partnership reported that the most straightforward way to decrease confirmation delays would be to reduce the number of presidentially appointed officials that require Senate approval, which is more than 1,300. The nonpartisan good government group urged stakeholders to examine Senate confirmation requirements for non-controversial boards and commissions, in particular. 

However the report largely attributed the delays to the practice of the party opposed to the president increasingly forcing votes on cloture, which technically ends debate on a nomination but in practice simply forestalls final approval. 

There were 40 or fewer combined cloture and nomination votes on nominees during the first two years of the administrations of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. In comparison, during the Trump presidency, there were 78 cloture votes for nominees and another 121 votes on nominations themselves. Likewise, there were 144 cloture and 183 nomination votes during the first two years of the Biden administration. 

“​​The rise in cloture and nomination votes symbolizes the breakdown in the confirmation process, as more and more nominees cannot be confirmed without two rounds of recorded votes to end debate and for final consideration,” wrote Partnership staffer Chris Piper in a 2023 blog. “Therefore, the Senate must devote increasingly more time to process each individual nominee.”

The Partnership also recommended simplifying nomination paperwork, providing more assistance to nominees and enhancing the Senate’s privileged nomination process, which provides expedited confirmation procedures for 285 nominations, most of which are part-time positions on boards and commissions. 

The report analyzed civilian nominations during the Biden administration as of May 16, 2024, excluding judges, marshals, attorneys and privileged nominations. 

The Partnership’s analysis also found that approximately 92% of Biden’s nominees were reported out by committees, and 97% of those nominations were confirmed by the Senate. The types of nominations that experienced the longest delays on the floor were often assistant secretary-level positions and members of boards and commissions.