The Senate confirmation process is broken. Here are three ways to fix it.
The US Senate’s constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent on the US president’s nominees for national security positions is one of its most important and fundamental roles. Senate-confirmed Department of Defense leaders—civilian and military—have the authority to direct the United States’ troops in conflict and the responsibility to ensure those troops are the best trained and best equipped. Several of President Donald Trump’s top nominees, such as Pete Hegseth for secretary of defense and the newly sworn-in Secretary of State Marco Rubio, recently finished their hearings as part of the Senate confirmation process. More hearings for other candidates will take place in the coming days. But if the past few decades are any indication, expect a long slog ahead.
Over the years, the confirmation process has gone from working well to badly bent to broken. In addition to a dramatic upsurge in the number of nominees requiring confirmation, the length of time required to process nominees in the executive branch and through the Senate has become increasingly protracted, even when there are no objections to a nominee’s qualifications.
Excessive delays in the executive branch and an indefinite purgatory in the Senate have become all too commonplace.
While there is a case for the executive branch and the Senate to reform the process for all confirmations, today’s global threats render it imperative to reform the process as it applies to national security nominees. Both the executive and legislative branches must do their part to ensure that high-quality nominees, essential to the nation’s national security, are nominated, confirmed, and appointed expeditiously.
As I detail in my latest book, If Confirmed: An Insider’s View of the National Security Confirmation Process, the executive branch and the Senate can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the nomination and confirmation process by taking the following actions:
1. Make executive branch and Senate vetting processes more streamlined, efficient, and timely
In an age when technology has transformed almost every aspect of life, it is unacceptable that White House and Senate vetting processes remain tied to hard-copy paperwork. Nominees must provide mammoth quantities of information as part of background checks, financial disclosures, ethics compliance, and personal data forms—some of which require answers to hundreds of questions under penalty of perjury. And this is what it takes just to begin the White House vetting process. Once the president transmits a nomination to the Senate, the nominee confronts a new set of questionnaires and document production requirements for the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). The forms the executive and legislative branches use to vet nominees are often arcane and redundant. That most must be completed by “stubby pencil” adds insult to injury.
Instead, a nominee should be able to digitally complete, sign, and submit a “smart form” to all relevant stakeholders with the push of a button.
2. Accelerate the Senate processes by instituting regular and predictable paths to a final confirmation vote
The Senate confirmation process is increasingly long and arduous, even for nominees who are ultimately confirmed. Historically, the Senate would simply approve or disapprove of a nomination. Nowadays, however, a third option has emerged: one in which the nominee is put in purgatory, never told whether they will get through.
Each of these delaying tactics, deferrals, holds, and insistence on the time-consuming, full-up voting processes via cloture is an inefficient use of the Senate’s precious legislative days. It also can discourage qualified individuals from accepting a presidential nomination.
To expedite the confirmation process, the relevant committee of jurisdiction (the SASC in the case of Department of Defense nominees) could commit to holding a confirmation hearing within sixty days of nomination, and the Senate could commit to an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor within one month of a favorable committee vote. The result would be more regular and predictable confirmation votes.
In addition, the Senate should both enforce the rules that require senators to publicly disclose their holds on nominees and offer clear, public arguments for holding nominees. Finally, the White House and the Senate need to collaborate to stanch further politicization of the confirmation process regarding military nominations.
3. Decrease the number of Senate-confirmed positions in the Department of Defense and avoid creating new posts subject to Senate confirmation
The Senate must address the sheer glut of Department of Defense nominees requiring Senate confirmation. The Department of Defense’s Senate-confirmed officials include the secretary of defense, deputy secretary, six undersecretaries and their deputies, the secretaries and the undersecretaries of the three military departments, and counsels in the military departments.
It would be logical and pragmatic to eliminate the confirmation requirement for all assistant secretaries of defense and military department assistant secretaries and general counsel, based on both their growth in number and current orientation in the Department of Defense’s leadership structure. While these are crucial positions, they may also be subject to Senate confirmation for reasons that no longer make much sense, given that they now function as the lowest rung on a long and complicated chain of political accountability.
Reducing the number of positions that require Senate confirmation can be achieved only through legislation. In consultation with the administration, Congress should pass a bill to modernize and update the list of Senate-confirmed positions, aiming to reduce by at least one-third the number of Department of Defense positions subject to Senate approval.
Reform of the nomination and confirmation processes is overdue. The Senate and executive branch must ensure that the constitutional processes of nomination, confirmation, and appointment—particularly as applied to national security nominees—are effective and timely. The global threats the United States faces leave no time for delay.
Arnold Punaro is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense program within the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is a former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
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Image: Photojournalists photographing Pete Hegseth (in blue suit in the middle) at his Senate Armed Services Committee nomination hearing at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA)