How does divided government affect presidential appointments

This particular flavor of divided government—the House controlled by one party and the Senate and the White House held by the other—was last seen between and , when Democrats held the White House and the Senate and Republicans controlled the House. Legislation passed during the last such period—the Budget Control Act BCA of —sets up one of several fiscal policy challenges Congress will have to resolve this year. The BCA implemented ten years of spending caps for the discretionary budget.

Since their enactment, however, Congress has repeatedly—in , , and —chosen to raise the ceiling on spending in two-year increments, with roughly equally sized increases on the defense and non-defense sides of the budget. The most recent of these deals expires at the end of September , which would, absent any other action, lead to spending cuts of roughly 10 percent.

The likelihood of the White House convincing Congress to go along with this proposal are slim. Given their success at insisting on increases to the non-defense caps under unified Republican control in and , Democrats are unlikely to see a reason to back down when they have more power in Congress in the form of a House majority.

Mack Thornberry R-Tex. But the longer Congress goes without reaching a deal on the spending caps, the more difficult it will be for the House and Senate to make meaningful progress on the 12 regular appropriations bills the two chambers are supposed to complete before October 1. Delays in the appropriations process also hurt federal operations. Short-term spending measures that are used to bridge gaps when bills are unfinished often limit the ability of agencies to start new projects, and once a final deal is reached, agencies sometimes must rush to spend the funds in a shorter period of time.

Reynolds Friday, August 2, Even with a caps agreement in place, moreover, the appropriations process may meet some hurdles of its own in divided government. Before the drama of the shutdown in December and January, Congress actually managed a relatively smooth—at least by recent standards—appropriations process in Central to this was not just the fact that a caps deal was already in place, but also a decision by the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee to limit the number of controversial policy provisions, or riders, that were attached to spending measures in the chamber.

Senior appropriators could attempt a similar effort this year. But Democrats, especially in the House, may see spending bills as their best tool to limit various Trump administration activities. Even if this dispute is resolved in favor of cleaner bills, any protracted disagreement also has the potential to slow down the overall process.

Also looming for — perhaps as part of the same deal on the spending limits —is the need to address the debt limit, which was last suspended as part of the legislation that also raised the BCA caps. The president is likely to do better with appointments he makes right after being elected than with any other, and divided government may affect confirmation rates. As reported in table 1, Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton fared about the same in winning confirmation for their nominees.

To the extent that a trend emerges, it reinforces the inference that the Senate has put up more obstacles over time. But Clinton faced a Republican Senate for the entire six-year stretch, while Reagan dealt with a Democratic chamber only in his last two years, when his confirmation rate fell to At the same time, President Clinton did win confirmation of 96 percent of his nominees in the first two years of his administration, albeit with less dispatch than did Ronald Reagan in This leads us to consider whether the Senate is truly the culprit here and, if it is, whether anything might be done to affect the way the chamber handles the confirmation process.

Nevertheless, convincing evidence does exist that the Senate has become both more individualistic and more partisan.

Barbara Sinclair, for example, reports steady growth in filibusters over the past 40 years, especially in the past 20, and Sarah Binder and Steven Smith demonstrate that the use of filibusters continues to reflect the policy goals of individual senators, groups of senators, and, at times, the minority party.

Moreover, the Senate continues to consider itself a co-equal partner within the appointment process. Still, the unlikely combination of individualism and partisanship surely defines the contemporary Senate. Senators took for granted that they? In the late s and early s, only about a third of Senate roll call votes pitted a majority of Democrats against a majority of Republicans. By the s, from half to two-thirds of roll calls were such party votes.

Unsurprisingly, the heightened individualism and partisanship has affected the confirmation of executive branch nominees.

The great majority of presidential appointees to high-level executive positions win approval by the Senate, although the success rate hovers at about 80 percent once a president has initially constructed his administration. Adding to their uncertainty, these later appointees must wait an average of four months for the Senate to act, once it has received their nomination. For these nominees, the process is long, and the outcome uncertain. Add to this the partisan politicking and the intense scrutiny, and it is no wonder that some potential officeholders decline the honor of nomination.

Might the Senate smooth the way for future nominees? Given the profound changes in the chamber over the past 25 years—the great latitude allowed individual members and the intense partisanship that dominates much decisionmaking—it seems unlikely that reformers would profit much from attempting to reshape Senate procedures. The best circumstance for speedier and more successful confirmations would be for the same party to control both the Senate and the presidency.

Ronald Reagan did better in the mids with a Republican Senate than did either George Bush or Bill Clinton with opposing-party control in the s. Bridging the separate institutions may be more valuable than seeking to reform an institution that has proven highly resistant to planned change. Related Books.

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