Some Key Obama Administration Jobs Still Unfilled

Asa Hutchinson, who led the Drug Enforcement Administration and was undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security, says worker productivity is at risk without agency chiefs in place.

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Medicare may be cut and Medicaid expanded as part of President Obama's health care plan, but there's no one permanently in charge of the two federal programs.

Diplomacy may be replacing military might as Obama's foreign policy of choice, but there's no new leader at the Agency for International Development.

Worried about people who text while driving? The president's choice for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is stalled in Congress. Concerned about illegal immigration? No one's been confirmed to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection. And as drugs and guns are flowing in from Mexico, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives still need bosses.

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Nearly 200 top jobs in the administration remain vacant a year after Obama began planning his ascension to power, the result of stalled nominations, new ethics rules, lengthy background checks and delays in Senate confirmations. More than half the vacancies are at five departments: Justice, State, Treasury, Defense and Homeland Security.

"Those are pretty significant policy jobs, and ones that the public ought to be concerned about," says New York University professor Paul Light, an expert on the federal bureaucracy. "Obama is well on pace right now to set a new record in terms of lateness."

The backlog has put Obama behind his predecessors in the time it's taking to fill out the government. The Senate has confirmed 366 nominees, compared with 421 at this point for the George W. Bush administration, 379 for Bill Clinton and 480 for Ronald Reagan, according to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid.

Reid blames Republicans for the backlog, noting individual GOP senators have held up many of Obama's nominees as bargaining chips on other issues.

Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, for instance, is blocking action on the deputy U.S. trade representative over a dispute about Canadian restrictions on tobacco imports. "Senator Bunning is trying to get USTR to focus on its job," says his spokesman, Mike Reynard.