Senate sitting on backlog of ambassadorial nominations

WASHINGTON – State Department officials and Washington’s diplomatic community are pressing the Senate to address a backlog of ambassadorial nominations during Congress’ post-election lame-duck session.

They fear that if the Republicans win control of the Senate, the already sluggish pace of voting on President Barack Obama’s nominees will worsen over the next two years.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen in the elections,” said Kristen Fernekes, a spokeswoman for the 17,000-member American Foreign Service Association. “We don’t know what’s going to happen in the lame duck. We’re deeply concerned about this becoming the new normal, and we don’t want to see it take 400, 300, 200 days to get people to their posts.”

Senate Democratic leaders say dealing with hundreds of pending nominations – ambassadorial, judicial and administration – will be a major thrust of the lame-duck session when Congress returns to Washington Nov. 12.

But confronted with a legislative to-do list that also includes keeping the federal government funded beyond Dec. 11 to avert a shutdown, Senate Democratic officials concede that lawmakers won’t plow through all the nominations during the lame-duck session.

That means those who aren’t confirmed before the 113th Congress adjourns would have to be renominated when the 114th Congress convenes in January, a lengthy process that would involve hearings and committee votes as well as Senate floor action.

Democrats and several political analysts foresee difficulties for the White House in getting its nominees confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who stands to become the chamber’s majority leader if his party wins control in the coming elections, has vowed to restore so-called “regular order” to the Senate, a process in which legislation and nominations go through committees before being debated and voted on by the full Senate.

But political observers predict that a Republican-run Senate would slow the pace of addressing Obama’s nominees, already at a trickle, even further.

Currently, 47 ambassadorial nominees are awaiting confirmation for assignments in 54 countries such as Argentina, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Norway, Rwanda and Jamaica. Of the 47 nominees, eight are awaiting confirmation hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The vacancies spawn from partisan feuding between Senate Democrats and Republicans and from complaints that Obama has nominated an unusually high percentage of political supporters rather than career diplomats for ambassadorships.

At one point over the summer, more than a quarter of the world’s countries didn’t have a U.S. ambassador. Just before adjourning in August and September, senators confirmed 10 ambassadors, including for Sierra Leone, an epicenter of the Ebola virus outbreak, and for Turkey, a key country in the fight against the Islamic State.