Bureaucracy - AP Government and Politics

The constitution stipulates that presidential appointees to cabinet positions must be confirmed by the Senate. The supreme court has no jurisdiction over appointments of any kind.

A bill of attainder could only be issued by the legislative branch of the United States government. A bill of attainder is a legislative act that declares a person, or group of people, as having committed an illegal act. It’s purpose was to render an individual or a group ineffectual by declaring them guilty without a trial. It is now seen as a violation of civil rights and is illegal in U.S. government.

Deficit spending is generally defined as the government practice of spending more money in a given year than has been actively collected in revenue. It is a continuous policy of the U.S. Government in this era and is a large reason why the growing national debt remains a controversial issue.

The United States census takes place every ten years. The first census was in 1790. The primary aims of the census, aside from collecting information and statistics about the population, are to determine the representatives that each state will be granted and to acquire data for taxation purposes.

The United States census is collected every ten years to determine, among other things, the population of each of state, so that their representation in the House can be fairly allocated. Reapportionment is the name given to the reordering of seats in the House, after the census count has been determined.

"Patronage" is the name given to the system of government appointment where officials are given jobs based on whether or not they supported the victorious political party. It may be seen as contrary to meritocracy, where jobs are awarded solely on the basis of merit.

All implementation programs, regardless of policy content, require three basic ingredients: resources (both money and staffers) must be gathered, an agency must be either created or assigned to administer the program, and each program’s guidelines and goals must be developed. Implementation is an essential bureaucratic task, especially because Congress quite frequently declines to formulate details for its policy ideas, in the hopes that the bureaucrats (who are after all experts in their fields) will take up the structural mantle. While standard operating procedures (SOPs) are indeed vital to bureaucratic functioning, these procedures come much further along in the process, once implementation has already been undertaken and the agency itself is up and running. Once implementation has been successfully achieved, SOPs are used as rulebooks by bureaucrats to determine how best to do their individual jobs within each agency.

As the final bureaucratic authority, the President has several powerful tools which can be used to curb the influence of or chastise an unruly bureaucracy. However, the sole power of budget alteration is not among them – while the President can put pressure upon the Office of Management and Budget to threaten cuts to an agency’s funding, final budgetary control resides with Congress. Congress is the sole allocator of all bureaucratic funds and so while the President can exert some influence in this realm, she/he by no means has the final say. Perhaps the most well-known amongst those control mechanisms which the President does have is the executive order: an order issued directly from the President, with the intention of implementing various Constitutional provisions, and bearing the full weight of any other law or piece of legislation. The President also is endowed with the right to appoint individuals of his choice to vacant high-level bureaucratic positions (although Senate confirmation is sometimes required). As a general rule, Presidents are typically quite selective about their appointments, preferring those individuals who have a proven track record of loyalty to the President and who have demonstrated agreement with the President’s policy goals. The President is also able to reorganize or even entirely eliminate agencies, although this seldom occurs, mainly due to the sheer difficulty, controversy, and administrative chaos that such a move often generates.

The Hatch Act bars all current federal employees (bureaucrats chief amongst them) from participating in partisan politics while on active duty. The Act also extends this ban even further on those employees who work in sensitive arenas (such as national security), prohibiting these individuals from any partisan politicking, even on their off-hours. The Pendleton Civil Service Act, passed in 1883, was the first concerted government effort to control and reform the bureaucratic system. Passed in the wake of President James Garfield’s assassination by a disgruntled office seeker, the Pendleton Act abolished patronage practices and created the country’s first merit-based civil service system. Today, only a small fraction of civil service jobs are open to direct Presidential appointment; these few positions are listed in the Plum Book, which is issued by Congress and details precisely which choice positions are available (they usually number about five hundred in total).

The Office of Management and Budget is an agency within the Executive Branch that develops a budget for the President to submit to Congress and also deals with the allocation of federal funds.

The Federal Reserve Bank was created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of the New Deal. It was a central component of Roosevelt's plan to reform the American banking system after the Great Depression.

The Pendleton Act was established in 1883 and issued to ensure that government jobs were awarded on the basis of merit, or qualification, alone rather than based on political ties or personal relationships. It can be seen as part of the public’s general reaction to the assassination of James Garfield by a government employee who acquired his job due to political privilege and not based on merit.

President Garfield was assassinated by Charles Guiteau. Guiteau, who wrote an essay supporting Garfield’s campaign, believed he should be rewarded with a position in Garfield’s government, and when this was not granted he enacted personal revenge. The motivation behind the assassination was one of the main factors that inspired the government to enact into law a bill that stated that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit alone, and not as gratitude for political favors. John Wilkes Booth was convicted of Lincoln’s assassination, Leon Czolgosz with the assassination of William McKinley, Lee Harvey Oswald with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Robert E. Lee was a Confederate general, and war hero, during the American Civil War.

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to act as a central organization to regulate the money supply of the United States and to establish moderately long term interest rates. In the years before the Federal Reserve, financial panics were common and extremely detrimental to the growth of the economy; the Panic of 1807 is usually considered the direct tipping point. Over the years, the power of the Federal Reserve has greatly expanded, particularly during the Great Depression Era, to try to prevent economic depression and recession.

The Department of Homeland Security, set up in 2001, is tasked with protecting the American people from terrorist attacks on American soil. It differs from the Department of Defense, which deals with foreign conflicts and dangers to American lives abroad.

The Department of Homeland Security was first proposed at the beginning of 2001 and was then expedited to meet the growing threat of terrorism after 9/11. Thus it was created during the Presidency of George W. Bush. The primary function of the Department of Homeland Security is to protect the citizens of the United States from terrorist attacks on American soil.

The term, "bureaucratic imperialism," is used to describe the belief that government agencies will always and inevitably grow in size and cost. The idea is that government agencies grow, without taking into account whether their growth confers any added benefit.

The national census is conducted by the Department of Commerce. The Department of Commerce is also responsible for issuing patents and granting trademarks, along with the research into and promotion of trade.

The Department of Homeland Security was first proposed in the early months of 2001, and it was promptly expedited following the terrorist attacks of September 11th. It was created during the Bush Administration. The Department of Homeland Security, as its name suggests, is tasked with protecting American citizens from terrorist attacks and responding to such attacks, as well as to national disasters.