On November 27, 2002, Congress created a commission charged with investigating theSeptember 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The National Commission on TerroristAttacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission, was to make a full and complete accounting of thecircumstances surrounding the attacks, and the extent of the United States' preparedness for, andimmediate response to, the attacks; andâ¦investigate and report to the President and Congress on itsfindings, conclusions, and recommendations for corrective measures that can be taken to prevent actsof terrorism. (3) The panel's July 22 report was the culmination of a series of hearings and investigations by the paneland its staff into the terrorist attacks. The report included a wide-ranging series of proposals tochange intelligence agencies of the executive branch and some committee structures within thelegislative branch. The 9/11 Commission's recommendations on the appointment process are designed to makeit quicker and more predictable for a relatively small group of nominees. The proposal is relativelysparse on details, and implementing it would require the Senate to flesh out the plan substantially;however, it is clear that the recommended changes in the Senate's confirmation process wouldprovide a certain up-or-down vote by the full chamber on all National Security Team nomineeswithin a definitive time frame (30 days) after a nomination is made at the start of an administration. On October 6, the Senate passed, by a vote of 96-2, legislation ( S. 2845 ),introduced by Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Susan Collins and Ranking MemberJoseph I. Lieberman, that would implement many of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations. Asintroduced, the bill did not address the 9/11 Commission's proposal to institute a time-frame forSenate consideration of national security nominees at the start of a new presidential administration. During consideration of the measure, Senators adopted by voice vote an amendment that added"sense of the Senate" language to the bill. It states that the "Senate committees to which thesenominations are referred should, to the fullest extent possible, complete their consideration of thesenominations, and, if such nominations are reported by the committees, the full Senate should voteto confirm or reject these nominations within 30 days of their submission." This is, essentially, anaffirmation of the current confirmation process. The House-passed version of the bill contains a different approach. The bill (an amendmentto S. 2845 , formerly H.R. 10 , which passed by a vote of 282-134) wouldrequire that the Office of Personnel Management create a list of all national security positions whichrequire Senate confirmation. The House provision would not change the current system for the top level of nationalsecurity appointees, such as the Secretary of Defense, who are Level I employees on the ExecutiveSchedule. The President would chose his nominee and submit their name to the Senate for its adviceand consent. The nominee would not be confirmed in the position without Senate action. For Executive Schedule Level II employees, such as the Deputy Attorney General, andExecutive Level III employees, such as an under secretary of State, however, the House provisionwould require that the Senate act within 30 days of receiving a nomination, or the nomination wouldgo into effect without action by the Senate. Finally, for Level IV and Level V national securityemployees who currently require Senate confirmation, the House provision would remove thatrequirement and make them appointed at the discretion of the President. The House-passed bill does not contain any details about how the Senate would implementthe change for Level II and Level III employees, concerning the 30-day deadline, but it is reasonableto assume that the analysis of the 9/11 Commission's recommended 30-day deadline would beapplicable (see section "Implementation of the 9/11 Commission's Recommendation"). On November 20, House and Senate conferees on the 9/11 legislation reported out acompromise measure. It includes the Senate-passed "sense of the Senate" provision on presidentialnominations, not the House-passed language. Last-minute objections prevented either chamber fromvoting on the compromise measure at that time, but Congress returned in early December to considerthe bill. (4) The Housepassed the bill by a vote of 336-75 on December 7, 2004, and the Senate followed suit the next day,passing the bill by a vote of 89-2. President George W. Bush signed the bill into law on December17, 2004 ( P.L. 108-458 ). The National Security Team, as defined by the 9/11 Commission, would include roughly 31positions from the Defense Department, the Homeland Security Department, the Justice Department,the State Department, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The group extends from the heads of thedepartments down through and including the Under Secretary positions. (5) In testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on July 30, CommissionChair Thomas Kean told Members that the Senate should "treat these nominations unlike othernominations in that they recognize the speed with which we need those people in place." (6) The report of the 9/11Commission also pointed out that the time for transition between the Clinton Administration and theBush Administration was shortened. "The dispute over the election and the 36-day delay cut in halfthe normal transition period. Given that a presidential election in the United States brings wholesalechange in personnel, this loss of time hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting,clearing and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees." (7) The commission's recommendations built on the work of a series of commissions andscholars who have investigated the appointment process generally over the last 20 years. Virtuallyall of the studies reached a similar conclusion: that it takes too long to get presidential nominationsthrough the appointment process. The Presidential Appointment Initiative, for example, a projectof the Brookings Institution, found in 2001 that "there is ample evidence that the process for bothnominating and confirming talented citizens to presidential service is failing at its most basictasks." (8) That followeda similar study in 1996 called the 20th Century Task Force on the Presidential Appointment Process,which called for prohibiting Senators from delaying consideration of nominee by using extendeddebate, called a filibuster. (9) "That the nomination and confirmation process is broken is a truism now widely acceptedby both Republicans and Democrats," wrote congressional scholars Norman Ornstein and ThomasDonilon in 2001. "The lag in getting people into office seriously impedes good governance. A newpresident's first year -- clearly the most important year for accomplishments and the most vulnerableto mistakes -- is now routinely impaired by the lack of supporting staff. For executive agencies,leaderless periods mean decisions not made, initiatives not launched, and accountability notupheld." (10) One of the complaints about the nominations process from scholars and commissions hasbeen that nominations can get bogged down in the Senate confirmation process, sometimes fallingvictim to parliamentary devices that can prevent a final vote on the nomination from taking place. An analysis of data on how the Clinton Administration and the current Bush Administration wereable to fill those offices considered to make up the National Security Team at the beginning of theiradministrations shows that Senate delay does not tend to be a major problem for this subset ofnominees. The Senate did not reject any of the National Security Team nominations in eitheradministration. (11) The amount of time it took nominations to work their way through the Senate varied widelyin this small sample, from one day for secretaries of state and defense in both administrations, to 128days for the Defense Department's Under Secretary for Policy in the Clinton Administration. Forboth administrations, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State were confirmed onInauguration Day. As Table 1 shows, of the 31 positions in the Bush Administration that would be included inthe new deadline, 22 were confirmed ahead of the 30-day schedule, four were holdovers from theClinton Administration (and did not require reconfirmation) and five nominations took longer than30 days to win Senate confirmation. The median elapsed days from submission of the nominationuntil Senate confirmation was 21 days. As Table 1 also shows, for all National Security Team nominees, the process of nominationby the President took longer than the process of confirmation by the Senate. In some instances, thedelay between the start of the vacancy to the choice of a presidential nomination was two to threetimes longer than the time from nomination to confirmation. Of the five nominations that exceeded 30 days for Senate confirmation in the BushAdministration, all were confirmed within 73 days -- four of the five were confirmed in less than 60days. In all five instances, the delay between the start of the vacancy and the choice of nominee waslonger than the time between the nomination and confirmation of the nominee. As Table 2 shows, the four holdovers from the Clinton Administration had a longerconfirmation time during their original consideration by the Senate. The mean time for thosenominations was 75 days. As Table 3 shows, the Clinton Administration's National Security Team members were alsoconfirmed largely ahead of the 30-day deadline. For the 23 positions covered by the definition, (12) seven were considered bythe Senate for more than 30 days. One was a holdover from the previous administration (and didnot require reconfirmation), one of those was confirmed at 36 days, another at 44 days, the next after47 days and another at 51 days. The remaining two nominees had lengthy confirmations -- one was122 days and the final one was 128 days. Table 3 also shows, however, that, as with the Bush Administration, the delays by theClinton Administration in making its appointments were generally longer than the Senateconfirmation process.