American National Government Exam 2

UARK 20003 Galloway

What is the primary purpose of the Office of Management and Budget?

Setting the terms of the budget

What are the official duties of the Vice President?

Presiding over/break ties in the Senate

Succeeding the president in case of death or incapacitation

What are the considerations when picking a Vice President?

Same political party

good public favor

from a region you want to win

from a different demographic

electoral factors

Impeachment-how common and how effective is it?

What are some restraints on Presidential power?

Who makes up the Cabinet and the White House Staff?

Longtime trusted allies or campaign officials

Who tends to be the more political group out of the Cabinet and the White House staff?

The White House Staff

Delegated powers

• Congress often delegates power to the Executive Branch and the federal bureaucracy when it creates a program

• This gives a lot of power to the federal bureaucracy and to the President

• It delegates power to the executive branch agencies to determine how goals are to be achieved

Who approves presidential nominations?

Only the Senate

3 contemporary bases of Presidential power and influence

• Popular appeals to the public

• Control of executive agencies or the creation of new administrative institutions and procedures

• Presidents also can expand power through their party

Identify restraints on Presidential power

• Congress can override a presidential veto

• Congress approves judicial and executive appointments

• Congress approves the budget

• The Supreme Court and Congress can investigate the actions of the president

• Congress can impeach the president and remove him from office

Vetoes-what are they, how effective are they, and how common are they?

• the Presidents power to turn down/reject acts of Congress

  • Can be overridden by a 2/3 vote in each house of Congress

  • 100 have been overridden out of 2,500+

Executive privilege

• The claim that communications between a President and close advisor cannot be revealed without a president's consent

Presidential pardon power

• Presidents have the power to grant pardons for federal crimes (NOT state crimes)

• Many uses of the pardon have been meaningful or controversial

• Usually partisan results of the crimes

Treaties vs. Executive Agreements; what are they and how are they different?

• Treaties: Contracts with other countries that require 2/3 senate approval

• Executive Agreements: contracts with other countries that do not acquire Senate approval, but that the Judicial Branch has ruled are the same as treaties

  • Ex. trade deals, nuclear deals

Presidential role re: command of the military and intelligence agencies

• The President serves as the commander of the entirety of the US Armed Forces

  • This is to protect democracy

• The President also serves as the chief of all the intelligence services (CIA, FBI, NSA, and 20 others)

• The President may deploy federal troops domestically to maintain public order

Impeachment-how common and how effective is it?

It is not very common and we haven’t has a president impeached yet

Who does the president nominate re: the federal bureaucracy?

The president nominates all the people at the top of the bureaucracy

Who does the president nominate re: the federal judiciary?

Every single federal judge

What justice is in the really really hot water re: ethics scandals?

What justices are in hot water re: ethics scandals?

Clarence Thomas- vacation with billionaire

Neil Gorsuch- did not disclose real estate

John Roberts- made over 10 million, did not disclose income

Chevron v. NRDC- know the difference between this and the loper v. Raimondo

After loper, judges can over rule bureaucrats

What are the main powers of Congress as the legislative branch of government?

enact federal laws, regulate interstate and foreign commerce, and control taxing and spending policies

Trustee representation style

make decisions for their constituents that they think are best

Delegate representation style

act on the express perceived preferences of their constituents

Sociological Representation style

• representation where the representative(s) have the same racial, gender, ethnic, religious, etc. backgrounds as their constituents-this is assumed to promote good representation

  • similarity

Agency representation styles

• holds that representatives should be accountable to those they represent, regardless of background. The threat of some sort of consequence(s) for their actions should promote good representation

  • Concern over consequence

Three main factors affecting who wins election campaigns to Congress

• Who runs for congress

• Incumbency/financial advantage

• Drawing of House districts

Three keys to power in Congress

• Control of one or both chambers

• Control of the committees

• Control of the rules

Unorthodox Lawmaking

• Increasing replacing "regular order" in lawmaking

  • Ex. Omnibus budget bills

• Includes several distinct elements

  • Closed Rules: limits on amendments and debate over bills to speed legislation

    • Sometimes bills 1000+ pages long are made available and then voted on less than an hour later under these rules

  • Multiple referral: referring a bill to multiple committees for consideration

    • Prevents any individual committee from killing a bill

 

Why employ unorthodox lawmaking instead of regular order lawmaking?

• Speeds up the process

• Increasing the likelihood of passage

Regular Order Lawmaking

• The traditional method of lawmaking

• A long, deliberative process with many opportunities for adjustment, alteration, and bill failure

• Pros

  •  knocks out the weak links

  •  time to gain support for your bill

  • Time to revise it

• Cons

  • long time

  • Bills can get diluted

Caucus

a group of senators or representatives who share similar interests/goal

What are the the 2 key Congressional agencies?

• Congressional Research Service: researches issues for legislators pertaining to policy proposals, legislation etc.

• Congressional Budget Office: calculates the cost of various legislative proposals

  • Often very influential and cited very often

  • Calculating the cost of expansive programs like IRA, or the ACA, can be extraordinarily challenging

Filibuster

a rule in the Senate only; a lawmaker can block a bill from going forward unless cloture

Cloture

how you end a filibuster; 60 senators must agree to suspend debate

Reasons for increased recent Congressional dysfunction

• More filibusters

• More individualism/normative breakdown

• More partisanship

• More media coverage

• Increased incentives to obstruct congress

Bureaucracy definition and examples

complex structure of offices, tasks, rules, etc. that large institutions employ to coordinate work

ex. DMV, IRS, Military

Bureaucrat definition and examples

professionals who work for a bureaucracy

ex. IRS agents, DMV personnel, social workers, police officers, public school teachers, park rangers, and inspectors within agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Street-level bureaucrat definition

lower-level bureaucrats who often interact with the public and implement policy (park rangers, teachers)

Implementation definition

the process of putting a decision or plan into effect; execution.

Hatch Act

prevents federal employees from engaging in certain political activates, especially in their work setting/context of their job

Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883

• Establishes that most Bureaucrats are hired on the basis of merit

• Prevents most bureaucrats from being fired for political reasons

Chevron v. NRDC

Ruled that Bureaucrats have the final say

Was overturned by Loper v. Raimondo

Loper v. Raimondo

Judges can overrule bureaucrats

Red Tape definition and analysis

• Refers to excessive rules/regulations/paperwork that slow excessively slow down the work of the bureaucracy

• There is a point to the annoying paperwork, equal treatment

Devolution definition

• when a program is removed from one level of the government by passing it down to a lower level of the government (such as from federal to state level)

• Advantage- more state-level power, tailored approaches

• Disadvantages-  fewer resources and inequality

Privatization definition/theory

• when a government service is contracted out to the private sector

• Theoretically this is a solid idea

• The threat of privatization has shown affective results

Government size re: spending

Decreasing

Government size re: employment

About 2 million bureaucrats, majority are females

Controls on the bureaucracy

• Judicial review: federal courts have the power to judge whether executive actions are constitutional, no matter if the actor is the president or the bureaucracy

• Citizen Oversight: ordinary citizens and journalists can request most all records from federal agencies-this kind of investigation has in the past revealed bureaucratic inefficiencies/ failures

• Whistleblowing: employees who report wrongdoing in their workplace

  • Ex. impeachment of Donald Trump came from a whistleblowing report

 

Statute definition

a law specifically passed by a legislative body

Law definition

a binding rule of conduct (bureaucratic rules are a kind of law

Precedent definition

• a prior similar case used by judges as a reference to decide a present case

  • Precedent is USUALLY followed as a guide when determining similar cases

Stare decisis definition

the ideas that precedent should be respected in similar cases unless the original idea is overturned

Jurisdiction definition and types of jurisdiction, generally

the sphere of a court's power/authority. Can be topical, geographical

Standing definition

Know the three main levels of federal courts

U.S. District Courts (trial courts), U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals (intermediate appellate courts), and the U.S. Supreme Court (final arbiter)

Know the rough distribution of court cases among levels of courts (lower level, upper

level, state courts, federal courts)

Most cases occur at the state trial court

Know instances where a court case would be under the jurisdiction of the federal courts

Supremacy clause

Know how many courts are established by Congress

Only the Supreme Court

Know constitutional specifics regarding the makeup of the federal judiciary

Know constitutional specifics regarding the size of the Supreme Court

Official qualifications for serving as a federal judge

• There are ZERO constitutional qualifications for serving as a federal judge-only normative ones

Know term limits and retirement ages for Supreme Court Justices

• United States' Supreme Court Justices have no term limit and no mandatory retirement age

Know the (general, no specifics) frequency of restrictions on court members in other

democracies

• Many other courts across the world have either term limits or mandatory retirement ages, or both

Judicial review definition

the power of the judiciary to examine and invalidate actions by the executive or legislative branches if they are found to be unconstitutional

Marbury v. Madison

• This case set the basis for judicial review, whole avoiding a power struggle with the executive branch

• How does this relate to current events?

  • Diplomatic

 

Understand how the court changes over time to reflect the outlook of the society it is a

part of

Solicitor General role and responsibilities

serves as the top lawyer for the United States government

Current one is John Saucer

Originalism

"strict constructionists" that refuse to go beyond the clear words of Constitution in interpretation. Typically the realm of conservative justices. Also referred to as judicial restraint or textualism

Judicial Activism

those who feel the Court should go beyond the words of the Constitution and consider the broader societal implications. Typically the realm of more liberal justices, but can apply to conservative justices as well

Checks on judicial power

• The courts cannot exercise power on their own initiative

• The courts lack enforcement powers on their own

• The president and the Congress shape the composition of the Court

• Congress can change the size of the court

House of Representatives: term length, constituency sizes, and summary of effect

2 years

435

more likely to focus on local interest groups with specific agendas

Senate: term length, constituency sizes, and summary of effect

6 years

100 senators

more likely to work with broader interests with regional or national-level goals

bipartisan

more time to build relationships

less willing to please constituency

Be able to identify the general religious/racial/age/wealth/gender distributions of

Congress

Religious:

• Lot of protestant and some Catholics in 119th congress

• Congress is overwhelmingly religious/saying they are religiously affiliate

Gender:

• House-125 of 434 members are women, 29%

• Senate- 25 of 99 senators are women, 25%

The House is more racially and ethnically diverse

Age:

• House- Old people

• Senate- Old people

Wealth:

Many are wealthy

Congress is disproportionately: religious, white, male, rich, old, educated

Be able to discuss the progress over time of gender equality in Congress-is it getting

better? Worse? More men than women? More women than men?

Gender equality in the U.S. Congress has improved significantly over time, but women remain far from reaching numerical parity with men

How do bureaucrats implement?

Agency studies the law and proposes rules to guide implementation to the OMB

Proposed rules are published for a month

public comments are compiled, reviewed, adjusted, then sent back to the OMB for final publication

long, exhaustive, detailed process

What power do bureaucrats have re: filling in the gray areas and specifics of Congressional directives?

• They have the force of laws

• Rules are easily changed from administration to administration

• Lobbyists and interest groups work to affect rules as often as they seek to affect actual laws

 

• Enforcement: bureaucrats enforce laws and rules, giving them meaningful influence over private actors

  • Include warnings and fines

• Innovation: Bureaucrats often innovate when rulemaking in the gray area: oftentimes, new technologies or policy approaches are the result

  • Ex. email

What is the general process of Congressional rulemaking?

When we think about bureaucratic efficiency, what do we often compare the federal

bureaucracy with? What hurdles exist for the bureaucracy and how do we consider those in evaluations of performance?

• We often compare the federal government to private business

• We all want an efficient federal government

• Who is held to a high bar by the public?

  • People working in the government (bureaucracy)

 

Effectiveness of devolution