Democrats Make Ambassador Confirmation Push in Lame-Duck Senate

Before they hand over control of the Senate to Republicans, Democrats are rushing through a long list of backlogged diplomatic nominees, some of whom have been waiting for than a year. On Monday and Tuesday, the Senate confirmed nine career diplomats as ambassadors, and on Wednesday it’s expected to confirm another five along with a nominee for deputy representative to the United Nations.

Among those confirmed this week was Ted Osius, who, when he takes his post in Vietnam, will become one of the United States’ first few openly gay ambassadors. Also confirmed was Karen Stanton, who waited 476 days before winning Senate approval to become ambassador to East Timor on Monday. Barbara Leaf had a relatively short wait, 121 days, before being confirmed Monday as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. partner in the air campaign over Syria against the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

But it’s not clear how many of the other nearly 50 State Department appointees awaiting committee or floor action will be confirmed before the 113th Congress closes. Anyone not approved by then has to be re-nominated and go through committee again in the next Congress.

Republicans have frequently stymied the confirmation process, saying Obama has chosen too many candidates with political ties to the White House rather than career diplomats. After Senate Democrats blocked their ability to filibuster confirmations a year ago, Republicans refused to allow diplomatic nominees to be confirmed "en bloc" rather than one-by-one. Since then, confirmations have slowed to a trickle for not only political nominees — the big-money donors handed cushy ambassadorial posts — but also career foreign service officers, who make up about half of the nominees still awaiting confirmation.

Donald Lu, a career diplomat up for the post of ambassador to Albania, has been waiting since July 2013. Frank Rose, nominated as assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance a few days before Lu, is the longest-waiting diplomatic nominee, having spent 488 days in limbo. Republicans are blocking his nomination due to concerns that the administration wouldn’t adequately loop in the Senate about arms-reduction agreements. The nominee for general director of the Foreign Service, Arnold Chacon, also has been waiting for more than a year.

At a press briefing Tuesday, State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke repeated calls for the Senate to confirm the career diplomat nominees en bloc. "They’re well-qualified, and they’re experienced," he said. "Each day waited is a day lost, which would be better spent engaging our international partners and promoting U.S. interests overseas. That includes security matters, but it also means that we aren’t using every tool we have to promote U.S. businesses overseas and creating jobs here at home."

Rathke said that after Monday’s vote, the remaining nominees pending floor action have waited an average of more than eight-and-a-half months.