American Government II: Congress, Presidency, Courts, States, Bureaucracy, Policy

This is Unit Eight of Social Sciences and History, part two of two: American government from the Court's conference room to a policy's whole journey. Part one closed on judicial review, the working power the text never lists. This part finishes the institutions, the Court at work, the states, the bureaucracy and policy, and it carries one idea to the capstone: the checks the Constitution designed are not a diagram but a journey. One policy passes through committee, floor, conference, the president's desk, an agency's rulemaking and a court's review, and at every station one institution can stop or reshape it. Follow the stations, and every institutions question on the exam has a place. By the end you will be able to say how a case is decided and tell activism from restraint. To name the states' cultures, offices and rules. To place an agency in its type. To name a policy by who pays and who gains, and pair the budget's terms. And to follow one policy through every institution.

Two entries on the Court at work: briefs, argument, conference and opinions, then activism, restraint, and why enforcement depends on the other branches.

Argument and opinions.

SSH 0724 Briefs, Argument, Conference, Opinions

Parties file briefs, and an amicus curiae brief comes from a friend of the court, not a party. At oral argument lawyers make their case; in conference the justices vote initially. A majority opinion needs over half of nine, a concurrence agrees on other grounds, a dissent disagrees. Argument, conference, opinion. Precedent from the opinion steers the system.

Activism and restraint.

SSH 0725 Activism, Restraint, and Enforcement's Dependence

Judicial activism is readier to overturn other branches, especially to broaden rights; judicial restraint is more likely to let them stand. Judicial power is not absolute: decisions reflect legal, personal, ideological and political influences, and enforcement depends on the other branches, a coequal branch guarding the Constitution. Decisions must keep up with the times, the anchor says.

Six entries on the states: the fiscal lever, three political cultures, governors and legislatures, term limits, counties and cities, and Dillon's Rule against home rule.

The states and their fiscal lever.

SSH 0726 The States' Fiscal Lever and Local Tax Pressure

The Constitution rebalanced the Articles so that both levels had authority and autonomy. Through history the two have worked out shared power, the federal government often using fiscal policy, the grants unit seven names, to encourage state compliance. Local governments, dependent on their taxing power, face unique pressure in downturns. Property taxes fund counties and cities.

Political culture.

SSH 0727 Elazar's Three Political Cultures

Elazar's theory traces three political cultures to early immigrants' values. Individualistic: government as a mechanism for individual citizens' concerns and goals. Moralistic: government as a means to better society and promote the general welfare. Traditionalistic: government as necessary to maintain the existing social order. Each views competition and participation differently. Critics cite new immigrants, urban-rural divides and diffusion, the anchor reports.

Governors and legislatures.

SSH 0728 The Governor's Vetoes and the Legislature's Three Jobs

Governors partner legislatures in lawmaking, head their parties, speak for their states and manage crises. Many hold line-item, amendatory and reduction vetoes, pardons, budget authorship and special sessions; an amendatory veto returns a bill with a requested change. Legislatures make law, serve constituents and oversee, varying in size and professionalism. Formal powers are those a state constitution or statute names.

Term limits.

SSH 0729 Term Limits: The Claims on Each Side

Term limits cap lifetime service or consecutive terms, and some states have struck them. Proponents say they raise participation, encourage women and minorities to run, and bring fresh ideas. Opponents cite research: no diversity gain, and inexperienced legislators leaning on lobbyists, while voters losing a favorite may stay home. Both sides are voiced as the anchor lists them.

Counties and cities.

SSH 0730 Counties and Cities: Five Forms

Counties choose among the commission system, an elected commission; the council-administrator system, an elected council appointing an administrator; and the council-elected executive system, voters electing both. Cities use the mayor-council system, both elected, or the council-manager system, the council appointing a manager. Sheriff, clerk, assessor and coroner are county work; water, parks and police are city work. Property taxes fund both.

Dillon's Rule.

SSH 0731 Dillon's Rule and Home Rule

Dillon's Rule holds state power above local governments' and declares states sovereign relative to them. Home rule gives local governments some independence from the state, typically detailed in a charter, the document framing a local government's responsibilities and authority. Expressed powers are named in a constitution, implied powers inferred. A delegate legislator follows the electorate's will; a trustee exercises judgment.

Five entries on the bureaucracy: spoils to merit, Weber's ideal and the self-serving models, four types, how it is controlled, and placing an agency in its type.

Spoils to merit.

SSH 0732 Spoils to Merit

In the post-Jacksonian nineteenth century the bureaucracy was charged with politics and corruption: the spoils system rewarded party loyalty with appointments. The eighteen eighties began a merit civil service, ability over loyalty, with competitive examinations as its device; it grew under Franklin Roosevelt and again in the nineteen sixties. Merit's cost is less responsiveness to elected officials, traded for efficiency.

Models of bureaucracy.

SSH 0733 Weber's Ideal and the Self-Serving Models

Sociologists built models of bureaucracy. Max Weber's ideal type is apolitical, hierarchical, governed by formal procedure, with specialists. Later models see bureaucracies as self-serving: the acquisitive model, competitive and power-hungry for resources, and the monopolistic model, inefficient because no competitor exists. Bureaucrats are civil servants and political appointees in nonelected posts. Harnessing self-interest is elected officials' constant task.

Four types.

SSH 0734 Departments, Regulators, Agencies, Corporations

Elected officials designed bureaucracies of different types for different functions: cabinet departments, headed by the president's most senior appointees; independent regulatory agencies; independent executive agencies; and government corporations, which serve a public interest and are overseen far more than private firms. Privatization brings market forces into government's functions. Placing an agency comes later in this lecture.

Control.

SSH 0735 Rulemaking, Oversight, FOIA, Whistleblowers

Negotiated rulemaking convenes those with a stake in proposed rules under neutral advisers to reach consensus. Congress and the president oversee through hearings, appointments and budgets. Citizens oversee through the Freedom of Information Act and their votes, and whistleblowers publicize misdeeds from within. Red tape is the rules for getting anything done; patronage rewards political support with positions.

Placing an agency.

SSH 0736 Placing an Agency in Its Type

The exam names an organization and asks what kind of bureaucracy it is, and the anchor's four types sort it. A cabinet department is one of the fifteen executive departments headed by a senior appointee who sits in the cabinet, answering to the president. An independent regulatory agency regulates a sector of the economy and sits outside the departments, insulated from presidential control. An independent executive agency performs a function outside any department but under presidential direction. A government corporation fulfills an important public interest, charges for what it provides, and is overseen by government far more than a private business would be. Ask two questions: does it sit inside a department, and does it regulate, execute, or sell. The department responsible for foreign affairs, headed by a secretary, is a cabinet department. A commission that licenses broadcasters and sets rules for them is an independent regulatory agency. An agency running the space program outside any department is an independent executive agency. A mail service that charges postage and answers to public oversight is a government corporation. The trap is independence: both independent types sit outside departments, and the regulatory one is distinguished by its rule-setting over a sector and its insulation. The second trap is the corporation: it looks like a business and is still government, overseen because it serves a public interest.

Four entries to close: naming a policy by costs and benefits, the safety net and the policy cycle, the budget's vocabulary, and one policy's journey through every institution.

Naming a policy.

SSH 0737 Distributive, Regulatory, Redistributive: Naming a Policy

The exam describes a policy and asks its type, and the anchor sorts by how costs and benefits are concentrated or diffused. Distributive policy collects payments broadly but concentrates direct benefits on relatively few. Regulatory policy focuses costs on one group while benefiting larger society, regulating companies to protect the public. Redistributive policy shares the wealth and income of some groups with others; the anchor's key term puts costs on a relatively small number and benefits on a different group. The anchor also sorts goods: private goods, excludable by price, which free-market economists say need no regulation; and what it calls public goods, air, water, wildlife and forests that no one owns, which most agree government must regulate. A subsidy for one crop paid from general revenue is distributive. Emission limits on power plants are regulatory. A tax on high incomes funding benefits for low ones is redistributive. A water project for one valley is distributive. Ask who pays and who gains, and whether either is many or few. The trap is calling any spending redistributive; distributive spending is paid by all and enjoyed by few without moving income between groups. The second trap is the anchor's public goods: air and forests are common goods in unit seven's and unit thirteen's terms, since use exhausts them, and this chapter uses the phrase loosely.

The arenas and the cycle.

SSH 0738 The Safety Net and the Policy Cycle

Domestic policy has three arenas: social welfare, where Social Security, Medicaid for low incomes and Medicare for retirees form a safety net; science, technology and education; and business stimulus and regulation. Advocates push change; analysts assess options, in theory impartially, through four phases from problem to evaluation. Entitlements guarantee benefits to a defined group.

The budget's words.

SSH 0739 Deficit, Debt, Mandatory, Discretionary: The Budget's Vocabulary

The exam tests the budget's vocabulary as pairs, and the anchor's key terms supply them. Deficit: the annual amount by which expenditures exceed revenues. Debt: the total the government owes across all years. Mandatory spending: earmarked for entitlement programs that guarantee support to those who qualify, needing no annual vote. Discretionary spending: what Congress must pass legislation to authorize each year. Progressive tax: the effective rate rises with income. Regressive tax: the overall rate falls as income rises. Excise taxes fall on specific goods. The Congressional Budget Office scores every bill's budget effect. A recession is two consecutive quarters without growth. Before the Depression policy was laissez-faire; Keynesian policy emphasized government spending to raise consumption; supply-side policy ties growth to productive capacity. This year's shortfall is the deficit; the accumulated total is the debt. Social Security's outlays are mandatory; the defense appropriation is discretionary. A sales tax taking a larger share of a poor family's income is regressive; a rate schedule rising with income is progressive. The trap is the anchor's sentence that Keynesian policies helped raise the country out of the Depression; that is one reading, voiced as the anchor's, and units fourteen and fifteen carry the economists' definitions. The second trap is the anchor's Federal Reserve Board setting rates; the course says the Federal Reserve.

Checks in motion.

SSH 0740 Checks in Motion: A Policy Through Three Branches and the Bureaucracy

The exam's institutions items are usually tested one institution at a time, and the anchor's six chapters can be read as one policy's journey through all of them, which is how the checks the Constitution designed appear in practice. A problem is identified and reaches the agenda, the first two phases of the policy cycle, pushed by advocates and assessed by analysts. It becomes a bill, and its fate turns on the chapter on Congress: which committee receives it, whether the majority leadership wants it, whether it survives markup, floor amendment, the second chamber, conference, and in the Senate a filibuster that only three-fifths can close; or whether it rides instead in an omnibus budget measure that leadership controls. Passed, it reaches the presidency: signature, veto, or signature with a statement about enforcement; and if Congress will not act at all, the president may reach for an executive order, effective and impermanent, or, abroad, an executive agreement that avoids the Senate. Enacted, it goes to the bureaucracy for implementation, the third phase: to a department, an independent agency, a regulator or a corporation, whose rules are made, now often by negotiation, and whose conduct is overseen by hearings, appointments and budgets, information requests, and whistleblowers. Challenged, it goes to the courts, where a dual system offers many doors, the federal tiers run district to circuit to Supreme, four justices can call a case up, and judicial review since eighteen oh three can strike the statute or the order, activism or restraint deciding how readily, while enforcement of the ruling depends on the branches it checked. Beneath the federal story the states run the same cycle with governors' vetoes, legislatures' three jobs, and cities and counties spending property taxes under Dillon's Rule or home rule. Evaluation, the fourth phase, feeds the next problem. The journey is a reading of the anchor's order, not a claim it makes in one place; use it to place a question at its station and to recall which check applies there. The budget's vocabulary and the Keynesian claim stay attributed. That is the journey this lecture opened with, drawn whole.

Look at what you can now do. You can say a case moves from briefs to argument to conference to opinion, and that activism overturns more readily than restraint while enforcement depends on the other branches. You can name Elazar's three cultures, the governor's vetoes and the legislature's three jobs, and tell Dillon's Rule from home rule. You can place an agency by asking whether it sits inside a department and whether it regulates, executes or sells. You can name a policy by who pays and who gains, and pair deficit with debt and mandatory with discretionary. And you can follow one policy from problem to Congress to president to agency to court and name the check at each station, which is the journey this lecture was built on. Unit nine opens on public opinion.