AP Government Unit 2 Review Notes

Legislative Branch (Congress)

• Congress is the law-making branch of the government.
• It is bicameral, consisting of two houses: the House of Representatives and the Senate.

House of Representatives

• Representatives are apportioned based on the population of each state.
• They serve two-year terms, making them closely tied to the people they represent.
• Each representative represents a smaller constituency, allowing them to know their constituents better.
• There are 435 representatives in the House.

Senate

• Each state has two senators, totaling 100 senators.
• Senators serve six-year terms.
• Senators represent an entire state, making them less connected to the intimate details of their constituency compared to House members.
• Senators have a few more constitutional responsibilities than do members of the house

Legislative Process

• Both houses must agree on identical versions of a bill before it is passed on to the president for signing.
• Coalitions are formed in both houses to make the legislative process more efficient.
• Senate coalitions tend to be longer lasting and more durable due to term length differences, while House coalitions can change more often.

Powers of Congress

Enumerated Powers

• Explicitly listed in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
• Include:
  • Federal funding: Congress can raise revenue through taxation, coin money, and pass a federal budget.
  • Foreign policy and military legislation: Congress can declare war, raise armies, pass draft laws, and direct funding to the armed forces.

Implied Powers

• Derived from the Necessary and Proper Clause (Elastic Clause) at the end of Article 1, Section 8.
• Allows Congress to pass laws required by the enumerated powers.
• Justification for powers that are not explicitly mentioned in Article 1, Section 8.
• Example: Alexander Hamilton argued for the establishment of a national bank based on the power to raise taxes.

Leadership Structures in Congress

House of Representatives

• Speaker of the House:
  • Chosen by the House members and is always a member of the majority party.
  • Has significant power, including recognizing who can speak and assigning representatives to committees.
• Majority and Minority Leaders:
  • Direct debates and guide their party members on policy-making issues.
• Whips:
  • Ensure party discipline and make sure members of the party align with party goals.

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 similarly to those in the House.

Congressional Committees

• Small groups of representatives who debate and draft precise legislation.

• Four Kinds of Committees:

  • Standing Committees:
    • Endure for a long time.
    • Permanent committees that do work that always needs to be done from congressional session to congressional session
    • New legislation begins here, but the majority of bills do not make it past this stage.
    • Examples: Senate Standing Committee on the Budget, House Judiciary Committee.
  • Joint Committees:
    • Have members from both the House and the Senate.
    • Example: Joint Committee on the Library of Congress.
  • Select Committees:
    • Temporary and created for a specific purpose.
    • Example: Committee formed to investigate President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal.
  • Conference Committees:
    • Resolve differences between House and Senate versions of a bill.
    • Goal: produce a single identical bill that can be passed by both houses of Congress.

• The majority party holds a majority of seats on each committee, and the committee chair is always from the majority party.

House Rules

• Mandate limited debate due to the large number of representatives.
• House Rules Committee:
  • Decides which bills make it to the floor for debate.
  • Can effectively kill a bill if it doesn't allow it through.
• Committee of the Whole:
  • A procedural move that relaxes some of the rules for debate.
  • Allows amendments for bills to be considered and debated more quickly.
• Discharge Petition:
  • If a bill gets stuck in a committee, a majority vote can bring it out for consideration in the House.

Senate Rules

• More relaxed rules for debate than the House.
• Senators can have unlimited time to debate bills.
• 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 a bill to a vote.
• Unanimous Consent:
  • A way of speeding legislation along.
  • The acting Senate president asks all the senators if they will agree to limit debate.
• Hold:
  • Even one senator can object, thus stalling the bill under consideration

How a Bill Becomes a Law

1. Introduction: A member from either house can introduce a bill.
2. Assignment to Committee: The bill is assigned to a committee, where it undergoes changes.
   • Riders: Non-relevant additions that benefit a representative's own agenda.
   • Pork Barrel Spending: Funds earmarked for special projects in a representative's district.
     • Bridge to Nowhere: Example of pork barrel spending where funds were added to a bill to provide body armor for U.S. troops in Iraq to build a bridge in Alaska.
3. Voting: The bill returns to the whole group for a vote.
   • Log Rolling: Representatives agree to vote for each other's bills.
4. Presidential Action: If the bill gets a thumbs up, it heads to the president's desk for signing.

Federal Budget

• Most of the federal government's income is gathered from income taxes, although there are other taxes and tariffs that generate income as well.
• Two categories of spending:
  • Mandatory Spending:
    • Payments required by law, especially with respect to entitlement spending.
    • Examples: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
    • Also includes interest payments on debt.
  • Discretionary Spending:
    • Funds allocated after mandatory spending is accounted for.
    • The biggest recipient of discretionary spending is paying federal employees.
• As mandatory spending increases, discretionary spending must decrease.
• Ways to increase discretionary spending:
  • Raise taxes (generally unpopular).
  • Approve an increase in deficit spending (borrowing money).

Factors Affecting Congressional Work

1. Ideological Divisions:

   • Political Polarization: Republicans have become more conservative, and Democrats have become more liberal.
   • Makes negotiation and compromise difficult, leading to gridlock.
   • Unified Government: Easiest way for Congress to get things done is for one party to have a majority in both houses of Congress.
   • Divided Government: Slows things down when the president is from one party and both houses of Congress are from another.
     • Example: Obama's Supreme Court nominee blocked by Republican Senate.

2. Conceptions of Representative Role:

   • Trustee Model: Representatives vote according to their best judgment.
     • Example: Mitt Romney's vote to remove Donald Trump from office.
   • Delegate Model: Representatives vote with the will of the people.
     • More common in the House.
   • Politico Model: A blend of the other two.
     • How they vote depends on the situation

3. Redistricting and Gerrymandering:

   • Every 10 years, a census is taken to determine the population of the United States and where they live.
   • Reapportionment: The number of representatives for each state is apportioned to reflect the population.
   • Redistricting: Congressional districts are redrawn to reflect those new seats.
   • Baker v. Carr (1962):
     • Established the one person, one vote principle.
     • Districts must be drawn to evenly distribute voting power.
     • Settled the question about whether apportionment issues are justiciable
   • Shaw v. Reno (1993):
     • Dealt with the constitutionality of drawing districts based on race alone.
     • Gerrymandering: Drawing districts to favor one group over another.
     • Racial Gerrymandering: Drawing districts so that certain races constitute the majority in those districts.
     • Ruled that drawing districts solely based on race, even if it helped historically discriminated people, was a dangerous practice and thus unconstitutional.

Executive Branch

• A president implements their policy agenda through formal and informal powers.

Formal Powers

• Laid out in Article 2 of the Constitution.

Veto

• The president can veto a bill within 10 days of its arrival on the executive desk.

• Three things can happen:

  1. The bill dies.
  2. The bill is sent back to Congress for changes.
  3. Congress can override a presidential veto with a two-thirds vote.

• Informal Powers with the Veto

  • The president can threaten to veto.
    • Sends a signal to Congress that they have to work the bill into something that the president can sign
  • Pocket Veto:
    • If there are less than 10 days left in the congressional session, the president can do nothing with it

Foreign Policy

• The president is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.
• The president can't declare war - that power belongs to Congress
• The president can enter into executive agreements with other heads of state.

Informal Powers

• Bargaining and Persuasion:
  • The president can use the attention to persuade the people according to the executive policy agenda
• Executive Order:
  • A directive from the president that has the force of federal law but is not actually law
  • Mainly executive orders direct the actions of the federal bureaucracy and the military
    • Example: Trump's wall on the U.S. Mexico border
• Signing Statement:
  • 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

Presidential Policy Agenda Conflicts

• The president's ability to make federal appointments can lead to tension with the Senate.
• Cabinet: Some cabinet appointments get downright scrappy
• Federal court nomination: There is a lot of tension here between these two branches
  • Judges hold that job for the rest of their lives
  • Conservative presidents appoint conservative judges and liberal presidents appoint liberal judges

Expansion of Presidential Power

• The scope of presidential power has expanded significantly over US history.
• Federalist 70: Hamilton argues that 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
• George Washington stepped down after two terms to put the kibosh on any fears of an overbearing executive
• Andrew Jackson expanded the power of the executive office to reflect that the president was a representative of the people and not congress
• 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
• Franklin Roosevelt expanded executive power when he used the veto 635 times

Presidential Communication

• One advantage that the president has is the eyes and ears of the nation, and good presidents use that attention to their advantage.
• Teddy Roosevelt said that the presidency was a bully pulpit
• The President does this through the annual state of the union address to congress
• Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to use the new medium of television to deliver live press conferences and that is when you saw the creation of a presidential communication office
• Barack Obama appointed 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 used twitter as his bully pulpit

Judicial Branch

• Talk about how the courts are structured and then talk about how it checks the other branches

Structure

• U.S District Courts
  • There are 94 of these spread across the nation
  • They have what's called original jurisdiction
• U.S Circuit Court of Appeals
  • There are 12 of these
  • They have what's called appellate jurisdiction
• The Supreme Court
  • Has both original and appellate jurisdiction
  • The supreme court is the only one of these courts that is explicitly mentioned in the constitution and that is in article 3

Federalist 78

• Hamilton argued that the independence of the judicial branch acted as a protection for its power
• Court gets its independence from the lifetime appointment of its judges
• Court has the right of judicial review which means it's the court's job to declare laws constitutional or unconstitutional
• This power isn't explicitly mentioned in the constitution

Marbury vs. Madison in 1803

• It was the court's ruling in this case that firmly cemented the power of judicial review in the supreme court's purview
• That had the effect of significantly increasing the power of the supreme court

How the Court Works

• The role of precedence is of extreme importance
• When a decision is handed down, it creates a precedent
• Decisions will act as a binding template for future decisions because of a principle to which the court holds namely starry decisis which when being translated means let the decision stand
• Starry decisis: If the court receives a case on a topic that has already been decided, it will often rule in the same way as the previous case
• Precedence can be overturned as it was for example in Brown versus the board of education
• The supreme court by comparison is less bound to precedence than the lower courts, but even so, precedents still serve to guide present decisions in a very significant way
• Judicial activism or judicial restraint
  • Judicial activism is the idea that the court acts to establish policy and considers more than just the constitutionality of a decision
  • Judicial restraint is the judge's belief that they aren't appointed to make policy like the elected legislature exists for that if judges act according to judicial restraint, they believe that a law should only be struck down if it violates the actual written word of the constitution
• The ideology of the judges also plays a role in how the court makes his decisions as well
• The way of power supreme court has often led certain groups of Americans to question the legitimacy of the court's power and this is especially true when controversial decisions are handed down
• When the court hands down a decision it effectively becomes the law of the land but there are some ways that the other branches can reduce the impact of those decisions

Check on the Judiciary

• The president can appoint new judges as the opportunity arises
• The president can mitigate court decisions is by a lack of enforcement
• Congress can invalidate the dred scott decision by passing the 13th amendment to the constitution which abolished slavery additionally congress passed the 11th amendment which limited the court's jurisdiction thus restricting the kinds of cases that can even be heard in the supreme court

Federal Bureaucracy

• Technically the bureaucracy falls under the authority of the executive branch and it's made up of millions of people who are employed to carry out the responsibilities of the federal government

Structure of the Bureaucracy

• The highest level of authority in the bureaucracy falls to the cabinet secretaries
• These are the leaders of the 15 executive departments
• These departments are further subdivided into agencies which all work together to accomplish the goals of the department
• Commissions: Regulatory groups who operate somewhat independently of the authority of the president but still fall under the executive authority
• Government corporations which are kind of like a hybrid between a business and a government agency basically the government acquires businesses when they want to offer a public good but the free market is the best way to offer that service

Work of the Bureaucracy

1. They write in for regulations but it's important to remember the distinction here
   • The bureaucracy is not creating laws congress is responsible for that the bureaucracy is only making a set of more refined rules that help facilitate the execution of the law
   • The sixteenth Amendment establishes the income tax but there's nothing about how those taxes are going to be collected it was the IRS who determined that taxes are due by April 15th and how we are to pay them so this is what's know
2. Issue fines when laws are violated
3. Heads of agencies will often testify before congress either to be held accountable for their actions or just to give an update on the work of their agency

Iron Triangle

• On the three points are bureaucratic agencies congressional committees and interest groups and these groups often work together and rely on one another to create policy
• Bureaucrats offer expertise to congressional committees with whom they are eager to cooperate since its congress who approves funding for their departments
• The committee members want to pay attention to interest groups because they often have policy experts who can inform them of the implications of certain policies
• Interest groups can provide funding for congressional races
• With all of this mutual benefit, the relationship between the three grows very strong and that is why it's called an iron triangle

Bureaucratic Departments

1. Department of Homeland Security: Protects the U.S. from terrorism and maintains and controls naiton's borders
2. Department of Transportation: Manages all kinds of transportation like highway and air travel
3. Department of Veterans Affairs: Manages veterans hospitals and the general welfare of america's veterans
4. Department of Education: Oversees states in their implementation of federal educational standards
5. Environmental Protection Agency: Works to protect the environment and human health through industrial regulation
6. Federal Elections Commission: Administers and enforces campaign finance laws
7. Securities and Exchange Commission: Regulates the stock market and prevents fraud

• All the leadership in these entities are folks whom the president appoints and if the bureaucracy doesn't act sufficiently in accordance with the president's policy agenda the president can fire them and appoint new leaders in cabinet and agency positions
• President does have a lot of influence over these entities, the president's influence isn't total

Congressional Check on the Bureaucracy

• Responsible for making sure That laws are upheld along the lines in which they were passed
• They can hold committee hearings to ensure such execution is happening
• Congress is the entity who's holding all the hooch in its pockets through the power of the purse congress can decide how to allocate funds to different agencies and agencies cannot spend

Presidental Check on the Bureaucracy

• Falls under the president's authority
• President Clinton initiated a national performance review in which the various agencies were required to scrutinize and change if necessary its mission and objectives

Judiciary Check on the Bureaucracy

• When citizens believe that the bureaucratic decisions are unconstitutional, they can challenge them in court
• The legitimacy of the bureaucracy has been challenged over time specifically regarding its independence

Origins of the Modern Bureaucracy

• Jobs were given based on the patronage system
• President Garfield assassination: Led to the Pendleton Civil Service Act in 1883, which created a merit system for bureaucratic appointments
• Garfield didn't give a bureaucratic job to a man who supported his campa
• Civil Service Reform Act: Upheld the merit system but made further reforms to help offer wider opportunities for women more efficient control of human resource departments etc.