(Bloomberg Opinion) -- After seven months, the U.S. once again has a confirmed secretary of defense. Of course, that good news comes after yet another acting official took a seat in President Trump’s cabinet, following Alex Acosta’s recent resignation as secretary of labor. High turnover and numerous empty offices are compounding this administration’s failure to provide orderly, competent government. They’re also making it impossible for Congress to discharge its responsibility for oversight of the executive branch.
Trump likes his stand-ins. As he put it in June, “Acting gives you much greater flexibility. A lot easier to do things.” Acting officials are more easily removed, hence more pliable. They’re also spared scrutiny by the Senate, which means less transparency in policy and fewer commitments for which office-holders might be held accountable.
Since Trump’s election, acting officials have held 22 of the top 42 cabinet jobs — a far higher proportion than usual. (Within the White House, Trump also has the highest turnover of top staff of the last six presidents.) His current acting officials include the secretary of homeland security; the ambassador to the United Nations; and heads of the food and drug, small business, and occupational safety and health administrations. In the Pentagon, acting officials hold more than a dozen top positions. Immigration policy is in the hands of acting officials, as well: Just 41% of the key jobs at Homeland Security requiring Senate confirmation have been filled.
For sure, the number of jobs requiring Senate confirmation should be cut. It’s currently around 1,200, which is absurd, and the process always creates partisan logjams and hurts government continuity. But this doesn’t excuse the president’s failure even to make nominations. “I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be — because you don’t need them,” he told an interviewer.
Some of the holes have been plugged under the terms of a law that lets the president tap the “first assistant” to a given office (typically, a deputy), or another senior official from the agency, or an officer serving in some other position subject to the advice and consent of the Senate. The rules typically allow the stand-in to serve for no longer than 210 days.
Yet Trump has often cheated. For instance, Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia, is the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He fell outside the act’s permitted categories and is likely to face difficulties in getting Senate confirmation, so the administration created a new position to vault him temporarily into the job. Whistleblowers have accused the Department of the Interior of evading the 210-day limit for acting directors of the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Those jobs still lack formal nominations and, as with immigration, have command of controversial policies.
Congress should dial back the number of jobs requiring confirmation, stiffen the act’s vague enforcement mechanisms, shorten the time that acting officials can serve, and specify the line of succession across all executive agencies to avoid the sudden creation of new posts. One possibility: In the absence of a confirmed “first assistant,” and if no nomination is proposed within 60 days, authority could pass temporarily to an agency’s senior career official.
The president has found it far too easy and convenient to work around an admittedly flawed system. The result is yet more Washington dysfunction. Congress needs to act — both to repair the system, and play its own part more effectively.
Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.
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