{"id":136419,"date":"2021-02-24T01:20:12","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T01:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smg.go-vip.net\/militarytimes\/uncategorized\/2021\/02\/24\/lack-of-pentagon-nominees-could-be-harbinger-of-slow-process\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T00:17:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T00:17:28","slug":"lack-of-pentagon-nominees-could-be-harbinger-of-slow-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2021\/02\/24\/lack-of-pentagon-nominees-could-be-harbinger-of-slow-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack of Pentagon nominees could be harbinger of slow process"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>Updated 2\/23\/21 at 9:40 pm EST with comment from an administration official.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 A month after the inauguration of Joe Biden as president, nominations for dozens of top Pentagon jobs have yet to be announced \u2014 and it may be quite some time before those roles are filled with confirmed individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of the 61 Senate-confirmed roles at the Department of Department \u2014 known officially as presidential appointments requiring Senate confirmation jobs, or PAS \u2014 only three nominations have been put forth. All three came in December, weeks before the Jan. 20 inauguration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lloyd Austin was announced as the pick for defense secretary on Dec. 8, and his nomination was sent to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 19. He was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/smr\/transition\/2021\/01\/19\/austin-uses-hearing-to-push-back-on-civ-mil-concerns\/\" target=_blank>confirmed Jan. 22<\/a>. Kathleen Hicks was announced as the pick for deputy defense secretary on Dec. 30, and her nomination was sent to the committee on Jan. 20. She was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/congress\/2021\/02\/09\/senate-confirms-kathleen-hicks-as-dods-no-2\/\" target=_blank>confirmed Feb. 8<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Colin Kahl, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/smr\/transition\/2020\/12\/30\/biden-selects-hicks-kahl-for-top-dod-roles\/\" target=_blank>announced alongside Hicks<\/a> on Dec. 30 to be the undersecretary of defense for policy, had his nomination sent to the committee on Jan. 20. Kahl will have a confirmation hearing in the coming weeks, according to sources, but he may face headwinds from Republicans on the committee. On Tuesday night, a spokesman for SASC ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., warned that Inhofe has \u201cserious concerns with some of the policy positions\u201d Kahl has taken in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Otherwise, there has been silence on nominees, both at the DoD and at other national security agencies such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/smr\/nuclear-arsenal\/2021\/01\/21\/biden-keeps-trump-appointee-as-acting-nuclear-weapons-chief\/\" target=_blank>National Nuclear Security Administration<\/a>, located within the Energy Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cGiven the speed with which they announced the top tier, I was expecting them to fill out the rest of the roster more quickly,\u201d said Kori Schake, a former national security official in the George W. Bush administration who now works at the American Enterprise Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking on background, a senior administration official told Defense News that the delay in confirming Biden\u2019s electoral win, formally known as ascertainment, has set the administration behind on the process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBecause of the delay in ascertainment and other factors, the FBI was been delayed for over a month in conducting background investigations for our nominees, which is a prerequisite before SASC will full process nominations,\u201d the official said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><b>\u2018It\u2019s hardly a normal working environment\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Austin and Hicks were able to receive quick confirmations, the months delay for Kahl may be a sign that the overall nomination process for future nominees will get pushed farther down the road than is usually the case. That, in turn, may lead the Biden team to delay nominations on smaller DoD roles while focusing on nominees for other top jobs across the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Across the entire Biden administration, 58 individuals have been nominated for the roughly 1,250 Senate-confirmed spots as tracked by the <a href=\"https:\/\/ourpublicservice.org\/political-appointee-tracker\/\">Partnership for Public Service<\/a>, according to Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former defense official who is now vice president of research and evaluation with the organization. That\u2019s more nominations than the previous four presidents have had 34 days after taking the oath of office, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So far, only 10 nominees across the government are confirmed \u2014 two of whom were confirmed on Tuesday \u2014 which lags significantly behind the previous four administrations, something Schulman attributes to the unique circumstances facing the start of the administration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Among those challenges: the ascertainment issue as highlighted by the senior official; the Jan. 5 runoffs in Georgia, which secured a 50-50 split in the Senate and required a long organizing period for committee leadership, meant some subcommittees were still <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/congress\/2021\/02\/16\/mark-kelly-tammy-duckworth-and-angus-king-claim-armed-services-gavels\/\">sorting out their leadership<\/a> rules into last week; the COVID-19 pandemic hangs over everything; and the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump, which absorbed precious time on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHistorical comparisons to prior transitions deserve context, and the Biden administration and Senate are both experiencing some really challenging circumstances.\u201d Schulman said. \u201cIt\u2019s hardly a normal working environment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another factor identified by Schulman is that the Biden team prioritized its early focus on lining up a core of appointees below the PAS threshold in order to immediately take on major portfolios like the budget or the pandemic. To this point, more than 70 officials \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/pentagon\/2021\/02\/17\/spencer-boyer-tapped-as-deputy-assistant-secretary-for-europe-and-nato\/\" target=_blank>deputy assistant secretaries<\/a>, special assistants to Austin and other key roles \u2014 have been announced for the Pentagon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But a focus on non-Senate confirmed roles means individuals get pushed into acting or temporary positions, which has potential drawbacks, particularly when dealing with the uniformed staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Schake said there are two main risks for not having nominees in as quickly as possible: \u201cNot having people committed to the president\u2019s priorities making early decisions that will set the tone of the administration, and not having their civilian appointees in place will require them to rely more on military staffs, undercutting the administration\u2019s avowed commitment to rebalance civil-military relations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those concerns are compounded by a hangover effect from the Trump administration, which struggled to keep confirmed officials in a number of top spots. By the time the administration flipped, 40 percent of the Senate-confirmed jobs were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/pentagon\/2020\/11\/20\/as-trumps-term-ends-40-percent-of-top-dod-jobs-lack-confirmed-officials\/\">being filled by acting officials<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Schake identified the other undersecretaries of defense \u2014 intelligence; personnel and readiness; research and engineering; and acquisition and sustainment \u2014 as the priority roles for the Biden administration to nominate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><i>Joe Gould in Washington contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After three nominees were announced in December, the Biden team has yet to put forth more defense nominees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":27676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":86,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[29,117,15,86],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3302],"class_list":["post-136419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-middle-column","category-news","category-pentagon-congress"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"ZOEJMAD3JJGPRJTMB2H6JMASLQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/pentagon\/2021\/02\/24\/lack-of-pentagon-nominees-could-be-harbinger-of-slow-process\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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