Last month I helped you decipher what progress does and doesn’t mean for executive branch nominations being considered in the Senate. I can now add that President Obama’s executive branch nominations are generally lagging behind President Bush’s when it comes to the Executive Calendar (list of all treaties and nominations that are ready to be taken up on the Senate floor).

On 11/12, the average age of Cabinet nominations ever placed on the Calendar was 34 days, and the average time spent on the Calendar was 10 days. That sounds pretty low, right? Well, it’s not when compared to President Bush’s rates at that same time – an average age of 12 days and an average time of 3 days. Even at the end of his Administration, President Bush was still way ahead of President Obama – an average age of 25 days and an average time of 7 days.

The same holds true for lower level nominations and when you count both Cabinet and lower level together – with one caveat.

On 11/12, the average age of lower level nominations ever placed on the Calendar was 103 days, and the average time spent on the Calendar was 36 days. For President Bush at that same time it was an average age of 68 days and an average time of 16 days. When you count both Cabinet and lower level together, President Obama’s average age was 102 days and the average time was 36 days, with President Bush at 66 days and 16 days at that same time.

The caveat: the numbers draw much closer or even level out by the time you get to the end of the Bush Administration. Where President Obama was at 103 days and 36 days for lower level nominations, President Bush finished out at 103 days and 30 days. Where President Obama was at 102 days and 36 days when you count both Cabinet and lower level together, President Bush finished out at 102 days and 29 days.

It might help to look at the charts from which these statistics were drawn. Please click here to go to our latest report on executive branch nominations. See the “Executive Calendar” section starting on page 3.

So why is there any holdup at all? Simple. Senate Republicans have thus far made the decision to do whatever they can to trip up President Obama, even if that means denying the country a fully-staffed government doing the best possible work. After all, who has time to actually govern when the next presidential election is just two years away?