美国国家公共电台 NPR Help Wanted: The Trump Administration (Still) Has Some Openings To Fill

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

To push his agenda forward, President Trump 1 will need one thing he doesn't have enough of yet, staff in key positions. President Trump has fewer appointees in place than any of his recent predecessors 2. Only a fraction of the hundreds of key jobs the Trump administration needs to fill have been nominated and confirmed by the Senate. NPR's Brian Naylor takes a look at why.

BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE 3: The Partnership 4 for Public Service, a nonpartisan good government group, lists 556 key positions, including Cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries and ambassadors. And of those positions, just 25 have been confirmed by the Senate. Terry Sullivan directs the nonprofit White House Transition Project and says there are a number of factors.

TERRY SULLIVAN: This is a really, really slow performance. And you can't get this poor performance without a lot of things going wrong.

NAYLOR: One of the biggest problems was the Trump transition's very slow start. You might remember that New Jersey 5 Governor Chris Christie was put in charge of the transition when Trump won the GOP nomination 6. But just three days after the election, he was ousted 7 from the job. Clay Johnson, who helped President George W. Bush staff up his administration, says that put the Trump team in an immediate 8 hole.

CLAY JOHNSON III: Everything they had done had been - was just thrown out. So they started from scratch the first day of the transition, and that's just a very steep hill to climb.

NAYLOR: The Trump administration blames Democrats 9 in Congress for blocking or holding up the president's nominations 10. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, on NBC's "Meet the Press" last week, pointed 11 the finger at the Senate minority leader.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MEET THE PRESS")

REINCE PRIEBUS: Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have done something that even many Democrats and even Democrat-leaning pundits 12 have said was - is inexcusable, which is to hold up one nominee 13 after the next to fill secretary positions.

NAYLOR: But that argument doesn't hold up. Going back to the Partnership for Public Service's numbers, the administration hasn't even submitted nominations for more than 400 of those 556 key positions.

Trump political adviser 14 Stephen Bannon has talked of doing away with this so-called administrative 15 state. But Terry Sullivan at the White House Transition Project says there's no evidence that Trump is filling jobs at agencies he cares about, such as defense 16 or Homeland Security, and not at agencies he doesn't, like EPA.

SULLIVAN: You don't see that. You see just this vast, common low performance across all agencies regardless of their agenda.

NAYLOR: Sullivan believes part of the reason is many of Trump's nominees 17 come from the business world with complex financial ties that make vetting 18 more difficult. Squabbling among the well-known factions 19 within the White House is another likely cause of delays. Chase Untermeyer was personnel director in the George H.W. Bush administration. He says it's difficult for any new White House to fill its ranks. He advises the Trump administration to take its time.

CHASE UNTERMEYER: My suggestion is not to feel pressured. Yes, there will be people watching the number of nominations sent to the Hill and the number of empty desks in the various departments and agencies. But it definitely pays off to do the job carefully rather than fast.

NAYLOR: Still, the longer it takes for the president to put his team in place, the longer it will take to put in place his policies.

Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.