Trump claims Democrats 'obstruct' his nominees, but it's much more nuanced than that

John Fritze | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump's White House doesn't trust its own staff, taking phones away With just 13 percent of Americans in a new Survey Monkey poll say they find the President honest and trustworthy, apparently those inside the Trump White House don’t even trust their own staff. Veuer's Nick Cardona has that story.

WASHINGTON – When President Trump talks about the hundreds of vacancies scattered across his administration he’s clear about where he places the blame: “Obstructionist” Democrats, he says at rallies and on Twitter, are slow walking his picks.

But a review by USA TODAY of the president’s most-delayed appointments, including some who have been waiting for nearly a year, finds a more nuanced explanation that involves timing, concerns about an agency’s direction and, sometimes, opposition from Republicans.

Trump’s appointment to head the Central Intelligence Agency’s office of inspector general has faced questions from Republicans. A proposed ambassador has languished over bipartisan inertia. A nominee to the Department of Health and Human Services was waylaid as lawmakers focused instead on the president’s tax overhaul.

The Senate should get funding done before the August break, or NOT GO HOME. Wall and Border Security should be included. Also waiting for approval of almost 300 nominations, worst in history. Democrats are doing everything possible to obstruct, all they know how to do. STAY! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2018

Trump has ratcheted up pressure on the Senate, and Republicans are considering a more aggressive schedule to get caught up on lingering nominations for hundreds of mid-level jobs that run the day-to-day operations at federal agencies.

“Waiting for approval of almost 300 nominations, worst in history,” Trump tweeted recently. “Democrats are doing everything possible to obstruct, all they know how to do.”

Trump has a point: The Senate has taken more time to clear his nominees than those of his recent predecessors — 85 days on average compared with 67 days for President Barack Obama, according to the non-partisan Partnership for Public Service.

Just more than 420 Trump appointees are confirmed compared with 652 at this point in George W. Bush’s presidency.

But experts also note the White House got a slow start, and has yet to announce candidates for hundreds of other positions.

“Some of it is partisanship, some of it isn’t,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, who believes far too many political appointments require Senate approval.

“Some of it is Republicans who don’t like what they see, and want to negotiate something out of it,” Stier said.

Republican concerns

While Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, Gina Haspel, won confirmation last week, another agency nominee has been stalled for months. Christopher Sharpley was named in September as the CIA’s inspector general but was ensnared in a controversy over whistle-blower protections.

In Sharpley’s case, it is opposition from Republicans — not Democrats — that is most notable. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, co-signed a letter last year citing investigations into whether Sharpley punished whistle-blowers. During a hearing last fall, Sharpley said he wasn’t aware of the probes.

Grassley questioned that testimony, writing that investigators had sought to speak with Sharpley for months, and that they at one point visited his office to review documents.

“It’s pretty clear he was misrepresenting his knowledge of the reprisal complaints against him,” said John Tye of Whistleblower Aid, a Washington-based group that represents two former CIA employees who filed complaints against Sharpley.

A CIA spokesman did not respond directly to questions about those concerns but said officials are working with the Senate Intelligence Committee “toward a successful confirmation.” Sharpley is serving in the job as the “acting” head of the office.

Agency record

Stephen Vaden was among the first Trump allies to land at the Department of Agriculture last year, part of the “beachhead” team charged with helping the new administration get its hands around the 84,000-plus employee bureaucracy.

But his nomination to be the department’s top lawyer, which was sent to Capitol Hill in September, has stalled for nearly nine months. Almost a dozen others nominated for Agriculture posts have since breezed past Vaden on their way to unanimous confirmation.

Public opposition has come from Democrats and centers on two issues: The reassignment of senior career staff at USDA and Vaden’s prior legal work on a voter registration law in North Carolina that a federal court struck down for targeting African-American voters with “almost surgical precision.”

Vaden, a Tennessee native, has Democratic opposition but also Democratic support. Three Democrats supported him in committee.

“If it was just Democrats then it would seem Republicans would have already approved him,” said Jeff Streiffer with an American Federation of Government Employees local union that represents lawyers in the office.

Vaden has previously said his work on the voter registration law was assigned to him by superiors. A statement from the Department of Agriculture described him as a “keen legal mind” and said that farmers, ranchers and foresters “will be well served by his counsel.”

Timing is key

Trump tapped Lynn Johnson in June as assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, where she would oversee a budget of $58 billion. Her delay appears to be a victim of timing more than partisanship.

Johnson, who runs a county public assistance office in Colorado, was referred to the Senate Finance Committee just as it was gearing up to write Trump’s sweeping tax overhaul, which the president signed months later.

That’s a common problem for Congress and any White House, said David Lewis, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University. And it underscores the need for to move nominations early in a new presidential term, he said.

“They just were slow out of the gate,” Lewis said of the early days of the Trump administration. “If you don’t hit the window right after the inauguration then the Senate moves on to other business.”

Johnson also faces Democratic resistance. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on Finance, warned in a hearing that her nomination “isn’t going forward with my support” unless Health and Human Services answered questions about a delay implementing an effort to better track foster care.

Who you know

Edward “Sonny” Masso, a retired rear admiral, served as a junior officer with former Trump strategist Steve Bannon in the Navy. His nomination to be the U.S. ambassador to Estonia arrived in early September — days after Bannon exited the White House in a spectacularly public blowup.

Masso, whose father emigrated from Estonia after World War II, never received a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Neither Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the chairman who would schedule that hearing, nor the top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, responded to questions about what happened to Masso’s nomination.

The uncertainty comes at a time when Estonia and other Baltic States have occasionally struggled to interpret Trump’s more aggressive posture toward NATO, and his occasionally inconsistent rhetoric on Russian aggression in the region.

Neither Democratic nor Republican senators have publicly criticized Masso. Two sources with knowledge of the process said a bipartisan inertia set in on the nomination following Bannon’s departure. The ambassadorship is currently filled by a career diplomat, and experts said it would be unusual to yank him from the job to make room for a political appointee.

A State Department spokeswoman referred questions to the White House, which did not respond to questions about Masso.

Controversial office

When Winslow Sargeant was nominated by President Barack Obama to be the chief counsel for advocacy at the Small Business Administration in 2009 the path to confirmation was anything but direct. It took the Senate more than two years to confirm him for the job.

And so Sargeant said he’s not at all surprised Trump’s nominee for the post, David Tryon, is also confronting delay.

Tryon, an attorney, was nominated in October to lead an office that has long been controversial regardless of who’s in the White House. The position was created to be an independent advocate for small business, and can weigh in on federal regulations from any agency if they have an impact on small companies. That alone makes the office a target for opposition.

Todd McCracken, president of the Washington-based National Small Business Association, speculated that Tryon’s delay is partly due to partisanship and partly because of “concern in some quarters on the Democratic side with the office itself.”

Five of nine Democrats on the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship voted against Tryon. An aide to Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said she opposed him because most of his career appeared to be focused on large companies.

But Sargeant said there is an institutional roadblock for the office that has little to do with politics: Because it is set up to be independent of the White House, its nominees often don’t get much support from senior administration officials.

“You feel like you’re on an island by yourself,” Sargeant said. “That’s true whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”