Unit 2 of AP Government

The Three Branches of Government

• Unit 2 focuses on the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the U.S. government, and the bureaucracy.

Legislative Branch: Congress

• Congress is the law-making body of the government.

• It is bicameral, consisting of two houses: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

House of Representatives

• Representation is based on the population of each state.

• Representatives serve two-year terms.

• There are 435 members in the House.

• House members are closely tied to the people they represent because they represent fewer people.

Senate

• Each state has two senators, totaling 100 senators.

• Senators serve six-year terms.

• Senators have more constitutional responsibilities than House members.

• Senators represent an entire state and are less connected to the intimate details of their constituency than House members.

• Both houses must agree on identical versions of a bill before it goes to the President.

• Coalitions are formed to make the legislative process more efficient.

• Senate coalitions tend to be longer lasting due to term length differences.

Powers of Congress

• Enumerated Powers: Powers explicitly listed in Article one, Section eight of the Constitution.

  • Include federal funding, foreign policy, and military legislation.

  • Funding: Power to raise revenue through taxation, coin money, and pass a federal budget.

  • Foreign Policy and Military Legislation: Power to declare war, raise armies, pass draft laws, and direct funding to the armed forces.

• Implied Powers: Powers that Congress can pass that are required by the enumerated powers, justified by the Necessary and Proper Clause (Elastic Clause) in Article one, Section eight.

  • Allows Congress to pass laws on economic, environmental, and social issues, even if not explicitly mentioned in Article one, eight.

  • Example: Alexander Hamilton argued for the establishment of a national bank using the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Leadership Structure in the House

• Speaker of the House:

  • Chosen by the House members, always a member of the majority party.

  • Has significant power, from recognizing who can speak to assigning representatives to committees.

• Majority and Minority Leaders:

  • Direct debates and guide their members in policymaking issues.

• Whips:

  • Enforce party discipline and ensure party members align with party goals.

Leadership Structure in the Senate

• President of the Senate: The Vice President of The United States.

  • A non-voting member unless there is a tie.

• President Pro Tempore:

  • The most senior member of the majority party.

  • Acts as president of the Senate when the vice president is not present.

• Senate Majority Leader:

  • Sets the legislative agenda by determining which bills reach the floor for debate.

• Whips:

  • Function the same way in the Senate as they do in the House

Committees in Congress

• Committees are small groups of representatives who debate and draft precise legislation.

• Standing Committees: Enduring committees that do work that always needs to be done

  • Senate Committee on the Budget

  • House Judiciary Committee

  • New Legislation begins here

• Joint Committees: Groups that have members from both the House and the Senate

  • Joint Committee on the Library of Congress.

• Select Committees: Temporary committees created for a specific purpose.

  • A select committee formed to investigate President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal.

• Conference Committees: Required to resolve differences in bills passed by both houses.

  • If the House passes a bill to raise income tax by 5% and the Senate has the same bill but added a provision to provide every American household with a five gallon tub of nacho cheese per month, well then they have to go into a conference committee and work out the difference.

• Committees generally serve the goals of the majority party.

• The committee chair is always from the majority.

House Rules

• Limited debate due to the large number of representatives which limits members to one hour for debate.

• House Rules Committee: Decides which bills make it to the floor for debate.

• Committee of the Whole: A procedural move that relaxes some of the rules for debate so that amendments to bills can be considered and debated more quickly.

• Discharge Petition: If a bill gets stuck in a committee and the rest of the House wants to bring it out for consideration, they can muster a majority vote, which will bring that bill out of committee and into the House for consideration and voting.

Senate Procedures

• More relaxed rules for debate because there are less members.

• Filibuster: An attempt to stall or kill a bill by talking for a very long time.

• Cloture Rule: Requires a two-thirds vote (60 senators) to shut down a filibuster and bring the bill to a vote.

• Unanimous Consent: Senators agree to limit debate as a way of speeding legislation along.

• Hold: Even one Senator can object stalling the bill under consideration.

How a Bill Becomes a Law

1. Introduction: A member from either house can introduce a bill.

2. Committee Assignment: The bill is assigned to a committee where it undergoes changes.

   • Riders: Non-relevant additions to the bill; sometimes added to help get the bill passed

   • Pork Barrel Spending: Funds earmarked for special projects in a representative's district.

     • Bridge to Nowhere: $400,000,000 for Alaska in there to build a bridge.

3. Markup and Amendment: The bill is marked up and amended, then comes back to the whole group where they vote on it.

4. Voting:

   • Log Rolling: Representatives agree to vote for each other's bills.

5. Presidential Action: If the bill gets a thumbs up, then it heads to the president's desk for signing

Federal Budget

• Most of the federal government's income is gathered from income taxes.

• Mandatory Spending: Payments required by law, especially with respect to entitlement spending.

  • Social Security Act, Medicare, and Medicaid which are very large categories.

  • Includes interest payments on debt.

• Discretionary Spending: Everything left over after mandatory spending is accounted for.

  • The biggest recipient of discretionary spending by far is paying federal employees.

• As mandatory (entitlement) spending increases, discretionary spending decreases.

• Ways to Increase Discretionary Spending:

  • Raise taxes, which is generally unpopular.

  • Approve an increase in deficit spending (borrow money).

Factors Affecting Congressional Efficiency

• Ideological Divisions: Political polarization makes negotiation and compromise difficult.

  • The quickest way for Congress to get things done in this atmosphere is for one party to have a majority in both houses of congress.

• Divided Government: The president is from one party and both houses of Congress are from another, this slows the machinery down

  • President Obama, a Democrat, had the occasion to appoint a new judge to the Supreme Court. And obviously he's gonna choose a liberal judge.

    • the Republican dominated Senate argued that since it was an election year, they should wait to see who would win the presidency before they confirmed a new judge.

  • In 2020, Republican President Donald Trump had the occasion to appoint a new justice, and the Republican Senate rushed the confirmation through waiting on the outcome of the election.

• Differing Conceptions of Representative Role in Determining How They Vote:

  • Trustee Model: Representatives vote according to their best judgment.

    • Republican Senator Mitt Romney's vote to remove Donald Trump from office is a good example.

  • Delegate Model: Representatives vote with the will of the people even if it goes against their own better judgment.

  • Politico Model: A blend of the other two; how they vote depends on the situation. If there is strong public opinion on an issue, the politico will consider that when voting and may act like a delegate. If not, they will vote like a trustee.

• Redistricting and Gerrymandering: Influences the efficiency of congressional work.

  • The constitution says that every ten years, a census must be taken to find out how many people live in The United States and where they live.

  • Reapportionment: The doling out of representative seats.

  • Redistricting: The redrawing of boundaries that those folks represent.

• Baker v. Carr (1962): Ruled that districts must be drawn in order to evenly to distribute voting power

  • Established the one person, one vote principle.

  • Settled the question about whether apportionment issues are justiciable

• Shaw v. Reno (1993): Considered the constitutionality of drawing those districts based on race alone.

  • Gerrymandering: A way of drawing districts and it's a little sleazy because districts can be drawn to favor one group over another

  • Partisan Gerrymandering: Drawn that way to ensure that a certain party has the advantage in that district.

  • Racial Gerrymandering: Districts are drawn so that certain races constitute the majority in those districts.

Executive Branch: The President

• The president implements policy agenda through formal and informal powers.

Formal Powers of the President (Article II of the Constitution)

• Veto: President can veto a bill, preventing it from becoming a law unless Congress overrides it the veto with a two thirds vote.

  • President can also exercise informal powers with the veto, example threaten the veto.

  • Pocket Veto: If there are less than ten days left in the congressional session, the president can do nothing with it, let the session expire, and the bill is effectively vetoed

• Foreign Policy:

  • Commander in Chief: The president is the commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces

  • Executive Agreements: The president can enter into executive agreements with other heads of state

    • Before The US entered World War II, President Roosevelt made an executive agreement with Britain to provide US destroyers in exchange for ninety nine year leases on certain UK naval bases.

Informal Powers of the President

• Bargaining and Persuasion: The president can use the nation's attention to persuade the people according to the executive policy agenda.

• Executive Orders: A directive from the president that has the force of federal law, but it's not actually a law.

  • Mainly, executive orders direct the actions of the federal bureaucracy and the military

  • One of Donald Trump's central campaign promises was to build a wall on The US Mexico border. And when congress wouldn't approve that funding, Trump declared a national emergency and by executive order moved money from several executive agencies so that the work could begin.

• Signing Statements: When signing a bill into law, the president can also issue a signing statement which informs the nation how the executive branch interprets that law and thus how the president intends to execute it, which of course could be different than the congressional version of the law

Presidential Appointments

• President appoints a team of advisors, which is known as the cabinet.

• Senate confirms federal court nominations, especially Supreme Court nominations.

• White House staff is appointed by the President but requires no Senate confirmation

Expansion of Presidential Power

• The scope of presidential power has expanded roughly three to four metric buttloads

• Federalist 70: Hamilton argues a single executive was necessary because one person is able to act swiftly and decisively on matters that require firm leadership and tactical decision making.

• Washington set the two term precedent of stepping down.

• Andrew Jackson expanded the power of the executive office to reflect

• Abraham Lincoln assumed way more power than any president before him, and he's generally forgiven for it because he had the civil war to fight.

  • Civil War: suspended the constitutional right of habeas corpus.

• Franklin Roosevelt used the veto 635 times to push his New Deal programs through Congress in order to address the devastating effects of the Great Depression; social security, minimn wage laws

Presidential Communication

• Teddy Roosevelt said that the presidency was a bully pulpit (bully just meant excellent).

• One of the chief ways the president does this is through the annual State of the Union address to Congress.

• The effectiveness of the presidential bully pulpit has changed as technology has advanced.

• Radio - Franklin Roosevelt discovered that he could talk directly to the people without any intermediary in his fireside chats.

• Television - John F. Kennedy was the first president to use the new medium of television to deliver live press conferences.

• Social Media - Barack Obama pointed to social media as the key to winning his first campaign by creating a stream of communication directly to his supporters through social sites.

  • Donald Trump built on this innovation used Twitter as his bully pulpit to comment dozens of times a day on legislation, his political enemies, and foreign affairs.

Judicial Branch: The Courts

• Structure of the Federal Court System:

  • U.S. District Courts (94): Have original jurisdiction.

  • U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (12): Have appellate jurisdiction.

  • Supreme Court: Has both original and appellate jurisdiction.

• Federalist 78: Hamilton argued that the independence of the judicial branch acted as a protection for its power due to lifetime appointment of its judges.

  • The Court has the right of judicial review, which means it's the Court's job to declare laws constitutional or unconstitutional, and it's through this power that the Supreme Court has the power to check the other branches of government.

• Marbury v. Madison (1803): Cemented the power of judicial review in the Supreme Court's purview which significantly increased the power of the Supreme Court.

How the Court Works

• Precedence:

  • When a decision is handed down, it creates a precedent, which means that unless there are some very extreme circumstances, this decision will act as a binding template for future decisions.

  • Stare Decisis: Let the decision stand' which when being translated means let the decision stand.

• Judicial Activism: The idea that the court acts to establish policy and considers more than just the constitutionality of a decision, it also considers the decision's broader effects on society

  • Brown v. Board of Education is an important example.

• Judicial Restraint: Judges believe they aren't appointed to make policy, like the elected legislature exists for that.

  • A law should only be struck down if it violates the actual written word of the Constitution.

• Presidents appoint judges that align with their own political sympathies and this has a role in whether the court will remain bound to previous precedents or create a new one.

• The court exercised its power of judicial review.

• The president can appoint new judges as the opportunity arises to mitigate the impact of court decisions.

• The president mitigate court decisions by a lack of enforcement.

• Congress can check the power of the branch and they do this through legislation.

  • Congress invalidated the Dred Scott decision by passing the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery.

  • Additionally, Congress passed the eleventh Amendment which limited the Court's jurisdiction, thus restricting the kinds of cases that can even be heard in the Supreme Court.

The Federal Bureaucracy

• The bureaucracy falls under the authority of the executive branch and is made up of millions of people who are employed to carry out the responsibilities of the federal government.

• The way people have been chosen to work in the bureaucracy has changed over time due to the patronage system and Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1883 which created a merit system for bureaucratic appointments.

Structure of the Bureaucracy

• Cabinet Secretaries: The leaders of the 15 executive departments.

• Agencies: Subdivisions within departments working to accomplish the goals of the department.

• Commissions: Regulatory groups operating somewhat independently of the authority of the president but still fall under the executive authority.

• Government Corporations: A hybrid between a business and a government agency acquired by businesses when they want to offer a public good, but the free market is the best way to offer that service.

  • Example PBS.

Work of the Bureaucracy

• Writing and Enforcing Regulations: Making a set of more refined rules that help facilitate the law due to delegated discretionary authority.

  • Compliance Monitoring: Making sure those industries are complying with those rules.

• Issuing Fines when laws are violated.

• Heads of Agencies testify before Congress for accountability or updates.

Iron Triangle

• Bureaucratic agencies, congressional committees, and interest groups that work together and rely on one another to create policy.

  • Bureaucrats offer expertise to congressional committees

  • Committee members want to pay attention to interest groups.

  • Interest groups can provide funding for congressional races.

Bureaucratic Departments (Examples):

• Department of Homeland Security: Protects The US from terrorism and maintains and controls the nation's borders.

• Department of Transportation: Manages all kinds of transportation.

• Department of Veterans Affairs: Manages veterans hospitals and the general welfare of America's Veterans.

• Department of Education: Oversees states in their implementation of federal educational standards.

• Environmental Protection Agency: Works to protect the environment and human health through industrial regulations.

• Federal Elections Commission: Administers and enforces campaign finance laws.

• Securities and Exchange Commission: Regulates the stock market and prevents fraud.

Checks on the Bureaucracy

• Congress can hold committee hearings to ensure such execution is happening.

• Through the power of the purse, Congress can decide how to allocate funds to different agencies and agencies cannot spend their money until a committee or subcommittee authorizes them to do so.

• President also check the bureaucracy such initiated a national performance review in which the various agencies were required to scrutinize and change, if necessary, its mission and objectives.

• When citizens believe that the bureaucratic decisions are unconstitutional, they can challenge them in court.