Democrats only partly to blame for the vacancies in D.C.

Says Democratic obstruction is the reason why “many important positions in government are unfilled.” — President Donald Trump on Wednesday, March 14th, 2018 in in a tweet

Important government posts are empty, but allocating blame is more complicated than President Donald Trump suggests. Democrats bear some responsibility, but so do Senate Republicans and the Trump White House.

Among recent presidents, Trump has had the smallest percentage of nominees confirmed by the Senate at this point in his presidency, 57 percent. That’s below Presidents Barack Obama (67 percent), George W. Bush (78 percent), Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush (each with 81 percent).

According to the White House, Democrats have forced 78 cloture votes on Trump’s nominees. But Republicans have also blocked some of his nominees. And Trump himself has suggested an understaffed bureaucracy might be a feature of his administration rather than a defect. He told Forbes in October 2017: “I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be — because you don’t need them.”

Our ruling

There’s a lot of blame to go around for the federal government’s relatively modest headcount. Senate Democrats, adopting the upper chamber’s new norms, have engaged in procedural combat. Yet Senate Republicans have also held up Trump’s nominees.

We rate this Half True.

SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES President Donald Trump has blamed Democratic obstruction for the high number of unfilled positions in his administration.