Under the Constitution, the President and the Senate share the power to appoint the principal officers of the United States. Almost all of the highest-level political appointee positions in the federal government are filled by these officers. Three distinct stages mark the appointment process—selection and nomination by the President, consideration of the nomination by the Senate, and, if the nominee is confirmed, official appointment by the President. During the confirmation process in the Senate, a nomination is usually first referred to one (or sometimes more than one) committee. If the committee or committees report the nomination to the full Senate, or are discharged from further consideration of the nomination, it is placed on the Senate's Executive Calendar and may be called up for floor consideration. The following pages briefly describe the referral process and identify, for each committee to which referrals have been made, the positions that fall within the committee's jurisdiction. To start the process of making an appointment to an advice and consent position, the President submits a nomination to the Senate. The Senate's executive clerk, acting on behalf of the presiding officer, gives the presidential message a number, and most nominations are referred to the appropriate committee or committees on the day they are received. Such referrals are guided by Senate Rule XXV, which establishes the subject matters under the purview of each committee and directs that "all proposed legislation, messages, petitions, memorials, and other matters relating primarily to [those] subjects" be referred to that committee. Precedents set by prior referrals, standing orders, and unanimous consent (UC) agreements pertaining to referral of nominations may also influence the referral process. Most nominations are sent to a single committee. Occasionally, the Senate has agreed, by UC, standing order, or statute, to refer one or more nominations to more than one committee. Some UC agreements provided for such a multiple referral only in the case of a specific individual nomination, while other UC agreements applied to all future nominations to a particular position. Nominations that are referred to more than one committee may be referred jointly or sequentially. If a nomination is referred jointly, the committees receive it simultaneously and may consider it concurrently. All committees to which a nomination is referred must report it to the full Senate or be discharged from its further consideration before it may be considered on the floor. In the case of a sequential referral, the nomination is referred first to the committee of predominant jurisdiction and referred sequentially to another committee as specified by the UC agreement or standing order. UC agreements for sequential referral can stipulate that the nomination must be reported out of the second committee within a specified period of time (usually 20 days), or else that committee will be automatically discharged from further consideration of the nomination. Joint referral of a nomination has usually occurred when more than one committee appears to have had relatively equal jurisdictional claims. For example, since at least the beginning of the 109 th Congress, nominations to eight positions—two in the Office of Management and Budget and one each in the Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, Department of Labor, and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation—have been referred jointly to two committees. Sequential referral has been more likely when jurisdictional predominance appeared to favor one committee, but another committee also had some jurisdictional claim on the nomination. In those instances, the nomination has usually been referred to the committee with predominant jurisdiction, and, after being reported to the full Senate by that committee, it has been referred sequentially to other committees. For example, the Senate has agreed, by UC, to refer sequentially nominations to most inspector general (IG) positions . In a small number of cases, nominations have been referred to more than one committee on an ad hoc basis by UC. A 2004 nomination for Under Secretary of the Treasury for Enforcement, for example, was first referred to the Committee on Finance. After the committee had reported the nomination, it was referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and simultaneously re-referred to the Committee on Finance, pursuant to a UC agreement. A 2006 nomination to be Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research was initially referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. Two days after this referral, the committee was discharged from further consideration of the nomination, and the nomination was referred to the Select Committee on Intelligence. The nomination remains in the jurisdiction of the Intelligence Committee. Also in 2006, a nomination to the position of federal coordinator for Alaska Natural Gas Transportation Projects was initially referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Two weeks later, the Senate agreed, by UC, to discharge this committee from further consideration of the nomination, and to then refer the nomination to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. In some instances, different committees have exercised jurisdiction over different positions within the same department or agency. (For details, see the committee presentations that follow.) For example, six committees have jurisdiction over positions in the Department of Commerce, and four committees have jurisdiction over positions in the Department of the Interior. Usually, however, one committee has jurisdiction over most positions in a department or agency. The appointment provisions for certain executive branch chief financial officers (CFOs) are unusual. The Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, as amended, covers CFOs in 25 specified departments and agencies. Of these, 17 positions may be filled through appointment by the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, or through designation by the President from among agency officials who have been confirmed by the Senate for other positions. These CFO positions are identified under the appropriate committees in this report. On June 29, 2011, the Senate adopted S.Res. 116 , a resolution establishing special expedited procedures governing Senate consideration of certain presidential nominations. Under the terms of the resolution, which operates as a standing order of the Senate, over 40 specified nominations or categories of nominations are, when received from the President, not referred to a Senate committee, but are instead placed directly on the Senate Executive Calendar under a newly created heading, "Privileged Nominations – Information Requested." A qualifying nomination will remain in this category until the Senate executive clerk receives written certification from the chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over the nomination that the "appropriate biographical and financial questionnaires have been received" from the nominee. Once certified in this way, the nomination in question is transferred by the executive clerk to a separate section of the Executive Calendar having the heading, "Privileged Nomination – Information Received," and it will remain in this status on the calendar for 10 days of Senate session. At the expiration of this 10-day period, the nomination is placed on the "Nominations" section of the Executive Calendar, where nominations reported by Senate committees are listed. The sponsor of S.Res. 116 indicated his view that they would be placed in this position on the Executive Calendar, "with the presumption that these noncontroversial positions would be [confirmed] by unanimous consent." Anytime that a nomination is on the Executive Calendar in either the "Information Requested" or "Information Received" section, any Senator, for himself or herself or on the behalf of another Senator, can direct that the nomination be referred to Senate committee in the usual fashion. On November 21, 2013, and again on April 6, 2017, the Senate voted to establish new precedents regarding the number of votes necessary to bring debate to a close on presidential nominations. Under these precedents, invoking cloture on presidential nominations currently requires a vote of a majority of Senators present and voting, or 51 votes if all 100 Senators vote. Prior to the establishment of these two precedents, the cloture threshold for nominations was three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn, or 60 votes if there is not more than one vacancy in the Senate's membership. This report identifies, for each Senate committee to which nominations have been referred during recent Congresses, the positions over which the committee has exercised jurisdiction. The lists of presidentially appointed positions requiring Senate confirmation are based on referrals as of June 30, 2016. For each committee list, positions are categorized as full- or part-time and then grouped by department or agency. Where nominations have been referred to more than one committee, the positions are noted under each of the committees to which the nominations were referred. A footnote indicates the authority under which the referral to multiple committees was made. S. 679 , which became P.L. 112-166 , removed numerous presidentially appointed positions from the advice and consent process. A complete list of the presidentially appointed positions that no longer required Senate confirmation pursuant to the enactment of P.L. 112-166 may be found in the Appendix to this report. Policy areas are not specified in statute for some of the sub-secretary positions. The policy areas shown in the listings for such positions are drawn from the text of presidential nomination messages and information from agency officials. In these cases, titles, specific responsibilities, and referral patterns may change over time. Most appointments to departments and single-headed agencies are characterized by an indefinite tenure; office holders serve at the pleasure of the President. In contrast, terms of office for appointments to multi-member entities, such as commissions and boards, are often for fixed periods of time. For those positions that have fixed terms of office, the lists include the lengths of the terms. Some commissions, councils, and other multi-member entities are required, by their enabling statutes, to maintain political balance in some way. This is noted in parentheses where applicable. Nominations covered by S.Res. 116 are highlighted in the report with an asterisk, noting their privileged status under the standing order discussed above. The information provided in this report was compiled from the Senate nominations database of the Legislative Information System, which spans the 97 th Congress (1981-1982) to the present; data on departmental and agency websites; telephone conversations with agency officials; and the United States Code .