Many of Trump’s personnel choices have been front page news (…) but you have not seen many headlines about the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Long considered a very important policy official, OIRA Administrator nominations have started slipping to the back burner. Here’s an update with some new context that I think is interesting. To begin, this table shows the historical timeline for nomination and confirmation of a new president’s first OIRA Administrator:

First OIRA Administrator	Rec’ in the Senate	Days between Inaug. and Nom.	Conf. Hearing	Confirmed	Days between Inaug. and Conf.
Sally Katzen (Clinton Admin.)	Apr. 21, 1993	91	May 19, 1993	May 28, 1993 (unanimous consent)	128
John D. Graham (G.W. Bush Admin.)	Mar. 28, 2001	67	May 17, 2001	July 19, 2001 (61-37)	180
Cass R. Sunstein (Obama Admin.)	Apr. 20, 2009	90	May 12, 2009	Sept. 10, 2009 (57-40 following cloture)	233
Neomi Rao (Trump Admin.)	May 18, 2017	118	June 7, 2017	July 10, 2017 (54-41 following cloture)	171
Richard L. Revesz (Biden Admin.)	Sept. 12, 2022	600	Sept. 29, 2022	Dec. 21, 2022 (voice vote)	700
TBD (Trump Admin.)	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD	TBD

Two remarkable findings from this first table. First, the voting patterns got tighter and tighter over time, perhaps reflecting the politics of the position. So I definitely wasn’t expecting to see Revesz’s nomination via voice vote. (Voice vote is when the presiding officer calls for “yeas” and “nays” and then makes their best guess about which side prevailed. Presumably you don’t use voice vote when you think it’s going to be close.)

Second, the big jump to 600 days to nominate the first OIRA Administrator in the Biden administration. In that case, Biden withdrew first nominee for OMB Director (for the first time in history, I believe). This set the whole process back because the conventional wisdom is that Cabinet heads (e.g., OMB Director) get confirmed first and then the administration works its way down the filling in the other Senate-confirmed spots in the agencies. I was interested in whether the conventional wisdom holds up for OMB/OIRA, and, if so, how much the OMB Director confirmation timeline drives how long it takes to confirm an OIRA Administrator. The answers are YES and A LOT:

First OMB Director	Days between Inaug. and OMB Dir. Conf.	First OIRA Administrator	Days between Inaug. and OIRA Admin. Nom.	Days between OIRA Admin. Nom. & OMB Dir. Conf.
Leon E. Panetta	1	Sally Katzen (Clinton Admin.)	91	90
Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr.	3	John D. Graham (G.W. Bush Admin.)	67	64
Peter R. Orszag	0	Cass R. Sunstein (Obama Admin.)	90	90
Mick Mulvaney	27	Neomi Rao (Trump Admin.)	118	91
Shalanda D. Young	419	Richard L. Revesz (Biden Admin.)	600	181
Russell Vought	17	TBD (Trump Admin.)	TBD	TBD

Source: Congress.gov Nominations Search

A few thoughts here. In this second Trump term, his first OMB Director was confirmed 17 days after Inauguration Day. Compared to Biden’s that’s warp speed (419 days). Turning to OIRA Administrator, Revesz’ nomination still took the longest, but you can see that it was really OMB Director confirmation that drove the overall timeline. Before Biden, the average number of days between OMB Director confirmation and OIRA Administrator nomination was 84 days. Excluding Biden, it’s 103 days. Let’s see what that implies for Trump’s second term.

With Vought confirmed as OMB Director, we can use the averages to see what might be reasonable expectations for an OIRA nominee. 84 days from Vought’s confirmation was April 30, 2025 and 103 days from his confirmation was May 20, 2025. So, we could have expected to see an OIRA nominee in the last month. And yet, we wait.

Stepping back, the trend towards longer waits to nominate OIRA Administrators is curious, especially when you consider the importance of regulation to the modern presidency and the centrality of regulatory promises to presidential campaigns and administrations. I have some theories about what’s going on here, but I’m afraid that’s what I like to call a 2-martini conversation. Until then, I hope these data help inform how you think about these nominations. Cheers.

*Thanks to Ohio State RA Adryan Gonzalez for his help behind the scenes.