USAID Staffer Tracker Update: Legislative and Public Affairs Nomination
9/13/12
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This is a joint post with Will McKitterick.
After a whopping forty-four months, the White House nominated a USAID assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs yesterday. Chuck Cooper, if confirmed by the Senate, would move to USAID from a similar (though not Senate-confirmed) position at MCC. The kicker? The Senate is scheduled to recess at the end of next week until after the Nov. 6 elections. This leaves two big questions: will he be confirmed at all and if so, will he have time to make an impact?
We've been keeping track of the long delays in nominating and confirming USAID's leadership:
| Position | Nominee | Status | Months Vacant |
| Administrator | Rajiv Shah | Nominated: Nov 10, 2009Confirmed: Dec 24, 2009Sworn-in: Jan 7, 2010 | 11 |
| Deputy Administrator | Donald Steinberg | Nominated: Aug 5, 2010 Confirmed: Sept 29, 2010 | 20 |
| Assistant Administrator (AA) – Latin America and Caribbean | Mark Feierstein | Nominated: May 12, 2010Confirmed: Sept 16, 2010 | 20 |
| AA – Asia | Nisha Desai Biswal | Nominated: Jul 1, 2010Confirmed: Sept 16, 2010 | 20 |
| AA – Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance | Nancy Lindborg | Nominated: Aug 5, 2010 Confirmed: Sept 29, 2010 | 20 |
| AA – Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade | Eric Postel |
Nominated: Nov 10, 2010Confirmed: Mar 3, 2011
|
26
|
| AA – Europe and Eurasia | Paige Alexander | Nominated: Sept 23, 2010 Confirmed: Dec 22, 2010 | 23 |
| AA – Global Health |
Ariel Pablos-Mendez
|
Nominated: Mar 10, 2011Confirmed: Jun 30, 2011
|
29 |
| AA – Africa | Earl Gast |
Nominated: Sept 27, 2011Confirmed: Mar 30, 2012
|
38 |
| AA – Middle East | Mara Rudman | Nominated: Feb 16, 2011 Confirmed: Sept 13, 2011 | 32 |
| AA – Management | 44+ | ||
| AA – Legislative and Public Affairs | T. Charles Cooper | Nominated: Sept 10, 2012 | 44 |
It's great to finally add a name to the legislative and public affairs slot, but the wait has been too long. It's hard not to wonder what might have been had the position been filled four years ago. Could USAID have worked with the then-willing House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman on a new Foreign Assistance Act? Or with the eager Senate Democratic and Republican colleagues to legislate a major food security initiative? Could USAID have saved the global health initiative? Or codified some of the good USAID Forward reforms--from procurement to impact evaluation and open government--that could be lost with a different cast of characters in a second Obama administration or a Romney administration?
I hope, for USAID's sake, that the nomination moves quickly (which should be helped by the fact that the position falls under last year's Senate resolution to fast track certain nominees) and that I'm underestimating what can be done in the remaining months of this presidential term. The next few weeks will tell whether the long-awaited nomination is better late than never or too little too late.
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