Story highlights Trump is far behind past presidents in top State Department nominations

No deputy or assistant secretaries of state have been nominated

Washington (CNN) As President Donald Trump proposes to slash nearly a third from the State Department's budget, the nation's diplomatic agency grapples with a more immediate problem: a lack of top officials.

Not only have no deputies been confirmed to join Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, but they haven't even been nominated in the first place.

As of Friday, the President has yet to send a single nomination to the Senate for top posts at the State Department, aside from Tillerson himself. The totals do not count ambassadorships because they are not considered jobs charged with running the department.

That puts him far behind the last three presidents.

Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush had already nominated seven top officials each by this time in their first terms. President Bill Clinton had nominated nine people to help lead the State Department by now, according to data from the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.

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