Exam 3 (Final); POL 120 Public Policy

Policy Evaluation (flashcards), Termination, social policy (flashcards), economic/budgeting policy, rust belt cities, west laf housing crisis

What does the Government Accountability Office (GAO) do?

What does the Congressional Budget Office do (CBO)?

• Work for Congress and is tasked with examining how taxpayer dollars are spent and providing Congress and federal agencies with objective and reliable information to help the government save money and work more efficiently. → like congresses “watch dog”

• Can be tasked to study specific policies or programs. Produces a lot of reports that provide evidence of program relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency (all good for legislators to use in the decision making process)

What is policy termination?

• An automatic STOP to specific government functions, programs, policies, or organizations

How is the president a key actor in policy termination?

• Presidents → Rescission: power that allows president to not provide funds for their intended purpose

  • Deferral → would decide not to spend certain resources approved by Congress during a certain period of time, preferring to spend monies at a later time (Presidents like Nixon began to use rescission as a way to destroy programs they didn’t like) so Congress limited their power of deferrals so presidents can only now propose them

How is Congress a key actor in policy termination?

• They can have legislative ability to terminate programs

• Termination can justify using CBO & GAO

• Constraints for lawmakers may create a lack of will to terminate program

How do pressure groups, the courts, the bureaucracy, and clientele play a role in policy termination?

• Pressure groups → usually want something specific

  • ex: Pro life grps don’t like abortions & want planned parenthood banned entirely rather than just taking away their one of many resource of abortion

• The Courts → Declaring unconstitutionality → decision can decide termination of a program

• Bureaucracy → A bureaucracy would have little incentive to terminate anything that might negatively impact pressure group support, due to pressure groups being key actors (usually) in helping bureaucracies obtain resources. 

• Clientele:  Termination of a policy program, organization, or government function may result in a loss to the client or at the very least inconvenience. → bc they depend on certain resources

Reasons for policy termination?

• During a presidential administration change

• During ideological change

• During political turbulence

• Leaning (might have found better solutions)

• Financial imperatives → lack of resources

What is a sunset clause?

A termination with a time limit → “On this day, this program will cease”

When does termination happen? (name 4-5)

• presidential administration change

• ideological change

• political turbulence

• Sunset Clauses: termination w/ time limit

How are these roadblocks to termination?

• Intellectual reluctance

• Institutional permeance

• Dynamic systems

• Anti termination coalitions

• Legal Obstacles

• Sunk Costs

• Intellectual reluctance → hard to say “im wrong”

• Institutional permeance → it’s understood that programs are often somewhat permanent

• Dynamic systems → getting rid of one program can affect several others

• Anti termination coalitions → mobilization to protect programs 

• Legal Obstacles → Decisions by the courts 

• Sunk Costs → voters may see a fight to end a program as a “waste”

Why is policy termination rare?

• Policymakers have an interest with avoiding the conflicts that are associated with policy termination

What is social policy?

• Humans living together as a group in a situation requiring that they have to deal with each other

What is farm bill & why does it matter that SNAPs is in it?

• Created during great depression to help citizens buy surplus from farmers ultimately benefitting farmers & citizens

• Important today because it still creates a demand for food (more ppl w/ $$ more ppl buying food)

Why is social policy generally difficult to avoid?

• Interwoven into much of way public policy is conducted (often intersects w/ social policy indirectly & directly)

  • When policy in general  is done, it often intersects with social policy directly and indirectly 

    • Ex: building a road/sidewalk would be interwoven with social policy because u gotta think about who it benefits, not benefits, etc. 

What is a budget?

a plan for the accomplishment related to program goals and objectives, an estimate of the resources available

What is the national budget?

• Budgets released by president and negotiated w/ congress

What are some reasons budgets grow?

• Governments grow overtime

• Times of crisis often require more funding (ex: 9/11)

• Federalism

• Public choice

• Institutionalism: → expensive to run institutions (to properly run them)

• Incrementalism: → ex: reforms to social security → have expendad budget overtime

How does the US determine its budget?

• Begins with President, through Office of Management & Budget (OMV), which prepares and submits the proposed federal budget

• In Congress:

  • House Ways & Means Committee & Senate Finance Committee handle revenue & taxation

  • House & Senate appropriations committees decide how money is spent

• If the Appropriations Committees approve, Congress passes appropriations (funding) bills, which signal support or lack of support for specific programs and agencies and ultimately determine what gets funded.

What is omnibus legislation?

What happens if there is failure to passing the 13 omnibus funding bills? (Omnibus Legislation)

Why has this gov shutdown lasted so long?

• Often done through Continuing Resolutions (CR’s)

• Failure to pass these → results in gov shutdowns & furlough

  • Problems: airline problems, funding SNAPS problems

• This full gov shutdown lasted so long because no CR’s (Continuing Resolutions) passed

• Partial shutdown means like around half didn’t get passed

What does the US treasury do?

• Print $$$

• Issues bonds & takes care of monetary policy

Why doesn’t the treasury give appropriations all at once, & instead gives them little by litte?

• Financial integrity and responsibility (giving money little by little because giving 1 million is easier to manage than 100million all at once)

• Cash flow → giving out too much $$ can disrupt currency (educated guess but can change once officially reviewing)

How does US generate revenue?

• Taxes → income, corporations, sales taxes

• Bonds → a way for the government to borrow money (debt) to fund spending when taxes fall short, essentially taking out a loan by selling securities (Treasuries) to investors, promising to pay back the principal plus interest, thus becoming a major expense (interest payments) the government must manage ( can look @ intl. notes when studying )

• Duties on goods

  • If you bring in a kinder egg from Europe u have to pay a little extra to bring it in bc kinder eggs (w/ the toys) r not allowed to be sold in US (which is why it has a duty on it)

How do GAO & CBO affect the budget process?

How do courts do this?

What about pressure grps?

• GAO & CBO figure out how we spend $$ and if we’re spending it like we’re supposed to

• Courts: could strike down parts of policies that can affect funding of certain programs/policies

  • ex: Court saying SNAPs needed to be paid but gave them a little bit of time to not pay it at the moment

• Pressure Groups:

What are 3 budgeting odels?

• Role Theory: traditional model that looks at roles of the actors in power

  • President as "advocate" House as "guardian" Senate as “appeals”

• Consensus Model: Discouraging complexity in the budgeting process

  •  18th/19th century thinking (don't make budget complicated at first, so they can more easily add and take off once its passed)

• Dissensus Model:

  • Growing animosity in the process

  • Limitations in decision making (sequester, etc.)

Roughly describe geographical location of the rust belt/coal mining belt

Midwest (IL, IN, OH, KY)

Northeast (Pennsylvania, New York)

West Virginia

Why have these cities become part of rust belt?

• Dying industries, more machine labor, less free trade, labor being overseas (less jobs)

What challenges do these cities face?

• These population migrations have created voids in funding for basic programs and maintenance of these cities can be difficult 

  • → takes money to move things that are rusting etc. so that's why we see a lot of it 

Give a little bit of history of west lafayette

• Founded in 1825

• Named after Hen Marquis de Lafayette

• Purdue founded in 1869

• etc. (on notes)

Why did Purdue do annexation (act of adding or incorporating a new territory or area into a larger one) in 2013?

• They were considered a smaller city & had less funds prior to Purdue tuition freeze

• They were a class 3 city but desired to become a class 2 (why?) → because with tuition freeze they'd need more funds to incorporate having 50k students

What have been some cons to the growing student population at Purdue?

What is reason for this rise in student population?

What has been seen as a solution? What other problems has this solution caused?

Did this create a big social policy problem?

• Less housing, more demand for housing

• Reason: Purdue frozen tuition

• Solution: High rise apartments (to get more housing & “drive down” rent prices)

  • Problems:

  • Caused rent to go up for EVERYONE

  • Can cause homelessness

  • Ppl moving further out, transportation becoming more complicated

• Yes

Who is benefitted from the new high rise apartments @ purude?

• Land owners

• City at large (increased taxes because growing population)

• Stakeholders at purdue (purdue booming but bc of tuition costs)

• The people who can afford those living spaces 

What was the issue for the Over The Rhine study case?

What are some reasons people may indicate that it is a success or a failure?

• Success: people coming back to downtown cincinnati instead of fleeing

• Businesses moving into area

• The tram they built to bring people in and make it walkable 

• Failure 

  • Residences living in over the Rhine have to move (ones who cannot afford it)

  • Local businesses (some) prolly had to move bc of higher rent 

  • A lot of disruptions in area