National Government Institutions - AP US 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.

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.

Excessive Presidential interference is not a typical obstruction when it comes to bureaucratic implementation plans. Examination of the historic record shows that most policy implementation failures occur for several key reasons, including poor program design and insufficient resources. Generally, it is up to Congress to provide a bureaucratic agency with a particular policy goal and the resources necessary to see that goal successfully implemented, but this is not always the case. Sometimes, Congress has difficulty resolving some problem within the plan’s design, so it simply passes the policy off to the appropriate agency, with the expectation that the bureaucrats will somehow resolve the issue on their own. On other occasions, Congress fails to adequately estimate the amount of resources a particular policy needs or the Legislative Branch simply does not have enough funds at the time to fully support a policy. Congress is also sometimes guilty of issuing bureaucrats with confusing, unclear, and/or contradictory instructions, so that the civil servants are left floundering, indecisive and prone to failures. Fragmentation also plays an important role in ensuring policy disaster; oftentimes, resources, information, and authority are divided up amongst various agencies, who have little opportunity or willingness to share these materials. Inefficient routines, cumbersome standard operating procedures, and too much administrative discretion have also been proven to play a decisive role in some implementation failures.

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 right to vote to impeach officials is reserved for the House of Representatives, but it is the Senate that has the power to try the officials that the House of Representatives votes to impeach.

The Senate procedure to end a filibuster, which requires a three-fifths vote in the Senate, is called the Cloture Rule. It originally required a two-thirds vote in the Senate, but this proved too difficult to attain, so the limit was lowered to three-fifths.

Logrolling is the term given to the exchange of political favors between two individuals or groups. One group offers political concessions to another group in exchange for the second group offering its support in favor of a bill that the first group wishes to get passed.

The Cloture Rule is designed to combat the occasional use of a filibuster in Congress. A filibuster is when one individual speaks indefinitely, but according to congressional procedure, with the intention of preventing Congress from debating or passing a bill. The Cloture Rule stated that, with a two-thirds majority (now three-fifths) vote of Congress, a filibuster can be ended and the debate quickly terminated.

A discharge petition is a means by which the House can vote to remove a Bill from a committee and bring it to the House Floor for discussion. It requires an absolute majority to be utilized, and so is rarely done successfully.

In Congressional procedure it is quite common for one group to try to add an unrelated amendment to a bill that seems likely to garner a lot of support. The usual goal is to try to pass a controversial or unpopular measure by hiding it in a much larger bill about something unrelated. This amendment is called a “rider.”

The ability of a Member of Congress to mail a letter to a member of their constituency, without having to pay for the service, is called Franking Privilege. It is designed, at least in theory, to encourage increased interaction between a representative and those that they represent.

A Select Committee is a temporary committee created with a prescribed purpose, usually to investigate one particular issue, and is then disbanded once that issue has been dealt with.

A Quorum is the minimum number of representatives required to be present in a government body in order to carry official business. A Quorum Call then is a roll call designed to see if the minimum number of representatives are present.