Modern States CLEP American Government

Although the Constitution does not explicitly give Congress the right to enact a military draft, which clause in the Constitution allows Congress to do so?

Necessary and proper clause

Which of the following committee assignments would confer the most power and influence on members of the House of Representatives?

Ways and Means

The power of the Rules Committee in the House of Representatives primarily stems from its authority to

Limit the time for debate and determine whether amendments to a bill can be considered

Which of the following is true of both the House of Representatives and the Senate?

Both chambers employ a complex system of permanent committees to assist them in carrying out their legislative duties.

Among the expressed powers of the federal government enumerated in the Constitution of the United States is the power to

Regulate interstate trade and commerce

A tax levied after one dies is called

An estate tax.

According to the Constitution, Congress may not

Grant titles of nobility

The president has been required to submit a budget to Congress since the passage of the

Budget and Accounting Act

Which of the following is a difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate?

The Senate has the exclusive power to ratify treaties.

If the vice presidency of the United States is vacated, the Constitution stipulates that the president must

appoint a new vice president with the approval of both houses of Congress

The principal source of presidents' political influence is their

constitutional authority to execute public policies

Each of the following is a power of Congress EXCEPT

recognizing foreign governments

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states that the vice president becomes president in all of the following cases except when

the president travels abroad to negotiate treaties

Which of the following ensures that the president and the vice president are of the same party affiliation?

The Twelfth Amendment

Which of the following best explains the consistent growth of the federal bureaucracy over the past hundred years?

Public demand for, and expectation of, social services

Which of the following is clearly a task charged to the Federal Reserve as a regulatory agency?

Providing financial services to depository institutions, the United States government and foreign institutions, as well as playing a key role in operating the nation's payments system

An example of an independent regulatory agency is

The Federal Reserve

Differences between House and Senate versions of a bill are resolved

in a conference committee

The passage of legislation in Congress often depends on mutual accommodations among members. This suggests that, to some extent, congressional behavior is based on

the principle of reciprocity

Which of the following is most likely to weaken party leadership in the Senate?

The use of filibuster by individual senators

The ability of the media to define the importance of particular events and issues is called

agenda setting

Which of the following actions gives the president an advantage over Congress in promoting policy?

Utilizing the media through the bully pulpit

Which of the following best describes the relationship between the media and citizens?

Citizens tend to seek out media that reinforce rather than challenge existing ideological views.

The framers of the original Constitution thought that which of the following would best protect judicial independence?

Life tenure during good behavior

Which of the following was a consequence of the New Deal legislation passed during the Great Depression under the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt?

The federal government became a more important agent of change than in previous presidential administrations.

The power of judicial review was established in

Marbury v. Madison

Which of the following is a check on the power of the United States Supreme Court?

Congress controls the number of justices who may sit on the Court.

Which of the following accurately describes a type of opinion that Supreme Court Justices issue

I. A majority opinion

II. A concurring opinion

III. A dissenting opinion

I, II, and III

The practice whereby individual senators can veto federal judicial nominations in their respective states is called

senatorial courtesy

All of the following statements correctly describe judicial appointments at the federal level EXCEPT:

Congress nominates and confirms all appointments to the federal judiciary.

When judicial nominees come before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify, the Senate is fulfilling which of its roles?

Advice and consent

If a party to a federal civil lawsuit loses the case and chooses to appeal, it would take the appeal to the

United States Courts of Appeals

Which of the following statements about Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka is correct?

It declared segregation by race in the public schools unconstitutional.

Which of the following best defines the term "judicial activism"?

The attempts by judges to influence public policy through their case decisions

Which of the following Supreme Court cases involved the principle of one person, one vote?

Baker v. Carr

In which of the following cases did the Supreme Court establish the precedent that a right to privacy stems from several amendments in the Bill of Rights?

Griswold v. Connecticut

The federal government may restrict civil liberties during a time of war citing

The need to protect national security correct

How is the Constitution amended?

By ratification through the vote of state legislatures

An oral statement that is false and intended to damage an individual is known as

slander

Which of the following principles protects a citizen from imprisonment without trial?

Due process

All of the following are constitutional rights that neither the federal government nor the states can restrict EXCEPT the right to

be indicted by grand jury

The right to keep and bear arms can be found in

The Second Amendment correct

Citizen's rights to privacy can be found in

The Bill of Rights correct

An election is a realigning or critical election if

there is a lasting change in party coalitions

In the United States political system, the situation when one party controls the presidency while the opposing party controls both houses of Congress is known as

divided government

Which of the following is true of political parties?

They try to gain control of government by winning elections.

Which factor has most contributed to the persistence of the two-party system in the United States?

Plurality rules for determining election outcomes.

The third two-party system, in place since 1856, is made up of

The Democrats and the Republicans

As compared with Republicans and Democrats, Independents in the United States are typically

less likely to vote in elections

The formation of numerous numbers of political action committees in the 1970s was a result of

The passage of bills by Congress attempting to limit the amount of money entering elections correct

Critics of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, better known as the McCain-Feingold Act, challenged it in the Supreme Court claiming it as a violation of rights found in the

First Amendment

In the electoral history of the United States, third parties have been effective vehicles of protest when they

dramatized issues and positions that were being ignored by the major parties

Individuals who identify themselves as conservative would most likely support

Lowering barriers to trade

In the past 30 years, the single most important variable in determining the outcome of an election for a member of the house of represntatives has been

incumbency

the weakening of political parties is most often traced to

progressive era reforms

A theoretical explanation of the operation of diverse interests in American politics is found in

The federalists papers

The formation of numerous interest groups during the post-Civil War industrialization shows the

influence of social tensions and economic stress on group

A law that requires lobbyists to clearly state who their clients are and what are they lobbying for us

The legislative reorganization act

Throughout most of the 20th century, what was most likely to occur in midterm congressional elections?

The party of the president typically lost seats in Congress, regardless of whether the president was a republican or a democrat.

According to the Constitution, what decides the presidential election outcome in the event that a single candidate does not get a majority of electoral votes?

The house of representatives

What is historically true of electoral college

The winner of the electoral college also usually wins the popular vote

The 2016 presidential election was one of only five presidential elections when

The winner of the popular vote did not win the presidency

All of the following are ways through which citizens learn about politics except

Regulatory agencies

Which of the following is generally the most significant influence on an individual's identification with a particular political party?

Family

Which of the following best describes the relationship between socioeconomic status and participation in politics?

The higher one's socioeconomic status, the greater the probability of active involvement in the political process.

Which of the following is the strongest determinant of an individual's voting behavior?

Political party affiliation

All of the following criteria must be met to become of citizen of the United States except

Being sponsored by a United States citizen

A graph denoting public opinion that reveals a bell curve with the fewest numbers of people being of extreme opinion on either end of the graph and the greatest number in the middle is representative of

Normal distribution

Closely held ideas that support values and expectations about life and politics are called

Beliefs

One important change in political culture since the Second World War is that United States citizens have become

less trusting of governmental institutions and leaders

Which of the following contemporary political ideologies posits that government power should be used to promote individual economic security and redistribute resources, but rejects the notion that government should favor a particular set of social values?

Liberalism

Of the following list of ideologies, Americans are most likely to identify with

Conservatism

The differences between the political attitudes of men and women are referred to as

the gender gap

Which of the following best defines political culture?

It is the shared attitudes of a people regarding government.

When the media calls out every candidates' moves throughout the presidential campaign this is called

Horserace coverage

Which of the following accounts for the greatest percentage of expenditure for state and local governments in the United States?

Elementary and secondary education

Which of the following best describes the concept of federalism embodied in the United States government?

The Constitution divides power between a central government and its constituent governments, with some powers being shared.

Public opinion is given a lot of attention in democracies because the democratic form of government rests on

the consent of the governed

James Madison's goal of setting power against power to minimize the concentration of authority in any one branch of government is outlined in the Constitution as a system of

checks and balances

The authority of a chief executive to withhold approval from specific parts of appropriations bills passed by the legislature is known as

a line-item veto

Which of the following political philosophers most influenced the writing of the United States Constitution?

Locke

Which of the following is true of the Articles of Confederation?

They created a national government with a legislature but no executive or judiciary.

All of the following can be considered weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation except

No legislative branch existed

In the Constitution as originally ratified in 1788, the provisions regarding which of the following most closely approximate popular, majoritarian democracy?

Election of members of the House of Representatives

The Great Compromise solved one of the greatest challenges facing the framers of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention, the issue of

Representation in Congress

In The Federalist paper number 10, James Madison argued that

the growth of factions was inevitable in a democracy

Which of the following statements best reflects the pluralist theory of American politics?

Public policies emerge from compromises reached among competing groups.

Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, literacy tests were used by some southern states to

prevent African Americans from exercising their right to vote

Which of the following best describes a referendum?

Citizens vote directly on laws proposed by a state legislature.

The use of initiative and referendum illustrates which of the following theories of governance?

Direct democracy