By far, Sonny Perdue had the latest starting date for any agriculture secretary in USDA history – 13 weeks after President Trump took office. Perdue lamented at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing that history is going to repeat itself with a long wait, likely running into the fall, for the rest of the team of executives that runs USDA.
“I’m being told some of them won’t be confirmed until after the August recess … That’s very troubling to me,” sad Perdue, who has six nominees, including deputy secretary, going through background checks by the FBI and the Office of Government Ethics. He did not identify the nominees, who will face Senate review, hearings and confirmation votes before they can report to USDA. They are “some very capable names that I think you all will be proud to confirm,” he said.
“It’s taking far too long with the undersecretary positions that we submitted to the White House,” said Perdue. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of urgency in those areas to get people cleared.”
Subcommittee chairman John Hoeven said there are 15 high-level vacancies at USDA for jobs that require Senate confirmation. So far, Perdue is the only USDA nominee that has been presented by the White House. Hoeven agreed with Perdue that the nomination process was moving too slowly. “We all need to do everything we can to expedite it,” he said.
The lack of action on nominees has become a topic in farm country. Trump selected Perdue for agriculture secretary on the day before his inauguration. It was widely reported that Perdue went to the back of the line of cabinet nominees. It took seven weeks before his nomination was formally submitted to the Senate.
All of the sub-cabinet positions immediately below Perdue – deputy secretary and the seven undersecretaries who direct USDA’s operating arms – are occupied at the moment by senior civil servants who act as caretakers until a presidential appointee takes the seat. The career employees were chosen by the departing Obama administration as a bridge to the Trump era and were empowered to sign orders and documents to keep USDA functioning. They work with the advice of Trump transition officials who arrived on Jan. 20.
“We’re here half-a-year into this administration and still doing (the job) with the rag-tag SWAT team, and doing a very good job with the people we put in place,” Perdue told reporters. He also credited the work of USDA staffers.
A month ago, Perdue was optimistic of prompt clearance of a team of executives to put into action Trump’s philosophy of less regulation and free enterprise. At that point, Steve Censky, chief executive of the American Soybean Association, was tipped as the likely nominee for deputy secretary with Bill Northey, the Iowa agriculture secretary, for undersecretary for farm production and conservation, and Ted Mckinney, Indiana agriculture director, for undersecretary for trade. Sam Clovis, a senior Trump advisor and leader of Trump’s beach head team at USDA, faced opposition as the rumored choice for undersecretary for research because he has no credentials in the area although he is a former college professor.
Perdue told reporters there were no issues piling up or unresolved because of the vacant top-tier jobs. “I’m tired of working 22 hours a day,” he said.