The Presidential Appointment Process

The most significant acts that any President of the United States will make are appointing his team, including selecting new Cabinet secretaries and agency heads. These presidential appointees are essential to a President’s ability to make decisions and govern. Presidential appointees symbolize a President’s actions and define a presidency through policies and actions. When the president takes office, these approximately 6,000 to 7,000 positions, including judicial vacancies, must be filled. These appointee positions include PAS (full-time and part-time presidential appointments, senate confirmed), PA (full-time and part-time presidential appointments not requiring senate confirmation), Non-Career Senior Executive Service and Schedule C positions. The number of persons who seek a position during the first six months alone will be an order of magnitude greater than the number of vacancies.

The number of appointees

The number of positions in each of the four appointment categories varies from administration to administration, and within the span of a single administration. A President may choose to increase or decrease the number of positions. Certain positions, such as PAS or NC-SES are statutorily governed, which requires congressional action and are thus determined by Congress. Other positions, such as PA or Schedule C, are determined by the Administration.

In 2000, there were approximately 1,815 PAS positions, 2,088 PA positions, 720 NC-SES positions and 1,428 Schedule C positions. The process to identify and fill these positions is an important factor in achieving an administration’s agenda.

Appointments requiring Senate confirmation

The first category includes positions that are presidential appointments made with the advice and consent of the Senate, most commonly referred to as ‘PAS’ positions. These are high ranking positions in cabinet departments, independent agencies, regulatory commissions and judicial appointments, including Secretaries, Undersecretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Chairpersons, Members of Boards and Commissions and Judges.

Appointments that don't require Senate confirmation

The second category includes positions that are presidential appointment, or ‘PA’, which do not require Senate confirmation. These positions include the White House staff, that comprise the many offices of the Executive Office of the President.

The third category is the non-career senior executive service positions or ‘NC-SES’. These positions are managerial, supervisory or policy positions including Deputy Undersecretaries, Deputy Assistant Secretaries and Directors of bureaus. The final category includes Schedule C positions, which are policy-determining positions requiring a close and confidential working relationship with the head of an agency or other key appointed official. Both NC-SES and Schedule C do not require Senate confirmation.

The transition team

There are several key offices involved in the appointment process. The first key office is created after the November election. The Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended, establishes the transition team as a Federal entity to provide for the orderly transfer of power between Administrations. The transition team may hire its own staff and may detail Federal employees as necessary.

As a transition team considers persons for administration positions, the most important factors are capability and judgment, experience, loyalty and diversity. The selection process can be a difficult, time-consuming effort by both the incoming administration and prospective appointees. An applicant is best served by choosing one position, ferreting out as much information as possible about the position, and asking sponsors to back the applicant with calls and letters to the transition team or White House or prospective agency head, if known.

The Transition office is later integrated into the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, which becomes the central office responsible for handling the appointment process.

Office of the General Counsel and its role in the appointee process

The next key office is the Office of the General Counsel which traditionally oversees the clearance process. The office is responsible for gathering information on a prospective appointee, evaluating that person’s background and actions to determine if they could prove embarrassing to the president and determining if there are perceived or actual ethical or legal barriers to the prospective appointee assuming proposed duties. The Office of the General Counsel ensures that all prospective appointees comply with the federal laws and regulations that impose ethical standards on federal officeholders and require them to divulge their finances and avoid personal and family conflicts of interest.

The General Counsel’s office sends out forms to each prospective appointee to sign, giving approval to the FBI to run a criminal and credit check and to begin a full field background investigation, consisting of interviews of neighbors, relatives, business acquaintances, friends and, possibly, enemies. The approval also allows the IRS to check tax returns for the last three years and tell the White House if the prospective appointee had tax issues, such as not paying federal income taxes. Both the ‘name check’ and the ‘tax check’ are done for full-time and part-time positions requiring Senate confirmation. The counsel’s office also plays the lead role in finding and screening candidates for the hundreds of judgeships that a president customarily fills.

There are three key forms that the Office of General Counsel will require a candidate that has been selected for a Senate confirmed position to complete upon entering the clearance process.

• First is the White House Personal Data Statement Questionnaire, which contains questions that the White House Counsel’s Office uses to vet a candidate’s background. This form is not available publicly.
  
• Second is Standard Form 86, which is the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s "Questionnaire for National Security Positions.” This form must be filled out by anyone seeking a security clearance, including all presidential nominees, even those nominated to part-time positions on boards and commissions. The White House forwards the SF 86 to the Senate, and some committees may release the information in the hearing record.
  
• Third is Standard Form 278, which is the executive branch’s "Public Financial Disclosure Report." This is a public document listing income, assets and liabilities of senior federal officials; it is routinely released to the news media.

Role of Office of Government Ethics

Another office that plays an important role is the Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency responsible for ensuring that prospective appointees and office holders comply with the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 and the Ethics Reform Act of 1989.

The Office of Government Ethics reviews and certifies the financial statements of presidential nominee. Both the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of General Counsel enlist the help of department lawyers in reviewing each nominee’s financial disclosure form (the SF 278) and identify stocks or other assets that might pose conflicts. Before certifying that a nominee has complied with the conflict-of-interest laws, the Office of Government Ethics and departmental lawyers often require a prospective nominee to sign an ethics agreement that commits the official to take "remedial" measures to resolve the conflict within 90 days of being sworn in. These remedial measures include recusal agreements, waivers, qualified trusts and divestitures.

Intent to nominate

The last major stage in the political appointment process for Senate confirmed positions is the confirmation process before the United States Senate. Upon receiving clearance from the Office of General Counsel, the Office of Presidential Personnel makes the final decision to nominate, and a press release is issued by the White House announcing the President’s intent to nominate.

The Office of the Executive Clerk submits the nomination in writing to the Senate. The Senate parliamentarian refers each nomination to the committee with jurisdiction over the position or the agency in which the position exists.

Confirmation hearings are generally open to the public and allow committee members to question a nominee. The committee then has the option to report the nomination favorably, unfavorably, or without recommendation, or to take no action at all. If the committee votes to report the nomination, the nomination is then filed with the legislative clerk, who notifies the executive clerk. The executive clerk assigns a calendar number to each reported nomination and the nomination is placed on the Executive Calendar.

The Senate meets in executive session to consider nominations, but may not begin floor consideration of a nomination until it has been on the Executive Calendar for at least one day, except by unanimous consent. Nominations are subject to unlimited debate or to cloture being invoked. Senators may place a “hold” on a nomination, delaying or preventing it from reaching the floor for further action.

The Senate has three options: confirm, reject, or take no action on the nomination. Confirmation requires a simple majority vote. Nominations pending at the end of a Congress are returned to the President, and they must be resubmitted the next session for the Senate to reconsider them. Once the Senate has acted on a nomination, the secretary of the Senate attests to a resolution of confirmation or rejection, and transmits the resolution to the White House Executive Clerk.

To assist a transition team or prospective applicant with a subset of the universe of political positions, this site provides an extensive overview of several thousand top positions - and their job descriptions.

The Size and Shape of the Non-Career Universe

What categories of positions are filled by political appointment, and how many positions are there in each category? The following table shows the four categories, nine sub-categories, and the numbers in each:

CATEGORY I: FULL-TIME POSITIONS
(ALMOST ALL ESTABLISHED BY STATUTE) THAT ARE FILLED BY PERSONAL PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTMENT:

Subcategory I-A “PAS” - Presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation.
(Cabinet secretaries and agency heads, deputy secretaries, under secretaries and assistant secretaries, plus also
members of regulatory commissions, 185 ambassadors, 94 district attorneys, 94 U.S. marshals, 15 in international organizations, 4 in the legislative branch) 1,125

Subcategory I-B “PA” - Presidential appointees not requiring Senate confirmation 20

Subcategory I-C Federal judges to be appointed.
(The typical number of vacancies that need to be filled during a presidential term -- out of a total of 868 federal judges. All require Senate confirmation and most have lifetime tenure) 200

CATEGORY II: FULL-TIME, NON-PRESIDENTIAL, NON-CAREER POSITIONS
(APPOINTMENTS MADE BY AGENCY HEADS BUT ONLY WITH THE SANCTION OF THE
WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF PRESIDENTIAL PERSONNEL)

Subcategory II-A Non-career positions in the Senior Executive Service (Upper-level positions) 720

Subcategory II-B “Schedule C” positions (Mid-level positions) 1,428

CATEGORY III: PART-TIME PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTEE POSITIONS
(ESTABLISHED IN STATUTE -- MEMBERS OF ADVISORY BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS)

Subcategory III-A “PAS” -- Requiring Senate confirmation
490

Subcategory III-B “PA” -- Not requiring Senate confirmation 1,859

TOTAL OF CATEGORIES I, II AND III: THE NON-CAREER UNIVERSE OF
CONCERN TO THE WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF PRESIDENTIAL PERSONNEL: 5,842

CATEGORY IV: WHITE HOUSE STAFF POSITIONS
(ONLY PARTIALLY LIMITED BY STATUTE, NO SENATE CONFIRMATION) NOTE: THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENTIAL PERSONNEL DOES NOT HANDLE APPOINTMENTS IN CATEGORY IV

Subcategory IV-A Receiving formal, signed commissions from the president (Assistants to the President and Deputy Assistants to the President) 80

Subcategory IV-B Appointed under presidential authority (Special Assistants to the President, and below, i.e. members of the White House staff including the First Lady’s, the Vice President’s and the domestic policy, economic policy civilian, White House Fellows, , and national security council staffs) 556

THE TOTAL NON-CAREER UNIVERSE: POSITIONS THAT CAN BE FILLED BY THE WHITE HOUSE DURING A TYPICAL PRESIDENTIAL TERM: 6,478