Chapter 12 Summary:

In April 20, 2010, there was the biggest oil spill in US history by British Petroleum. As a result the MMS (Minerals Management Service) was split into the new Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

12.1:Bureaucracy and bureaucrats are used to describe the federal government’s organizations and employees. A bureaucracy is a form of organization that delivers goods and services at the lowest cost through specialization of jobs, close supervision on employees, and clear rules for making decisions. The federal bureaucracy is responsible for executing laws on behalf of the president, congress, and judiciary. The president has the power to determine how the bureaucracy would look and the congress determines the structure. The framers of the constitution prohibited members of congress from holding executive branch positions. The president has the power to nominate senior officers of government, senate can confirm or deny them. Congress has the power to create new departments and agencies. Federal employees work for departments or agencies: Departments(biggest and have the most funding), independent stand alone agencies (have focused missions and exist outside a department) , independent regulatory commissions (special kind of independent agency), and government corporations (private businesses and have special authority to set the prices of their services, make money). There are 15 departments today that spend 93% of all federal dollars. The 5 largest departments are: Defense Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice, which works with the FBI. Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, State, and Treasury are the inner cabinet. Independent stand-alone agencies work on specific problems, there are 50 agencies today. The President appoints all independent regulatory commissioners and the Senate confirms each one separately. Commissioners cannot be removed from office without a cause. There are dozens of these commissions with the power to protect consumers. Government corporations act more like businesses and are allowed to make money through the sale of train tickets, stamps, or home loans. Examples would be Fannie Mae, the US postal service, and the corporation for public broadcasting.

There are 3 types of federal employees: presidential appointees (the generally leave their posts after the end of the president’s term), members of the Senior Executive Service (appointed for a limited time on the basis of loyalty to the president, highly competitive process), and the civil service(employees who work through a competitive process). The spoils system that Jackson enforced, rewarding party loyalists with jobs is now prevented through unions and the merit system. The Office of Personnel Management and the merit systems protection board helps prevent this spoils system. One has to complete an application and a civil service test.Because federal employees administer so many laws that can affect election outcomes, they are subject to tight to regulation of most forms of political participation. Under the Hatch Act, federal civil servants were prohibited from raising money for candidates, wearing campaign buttons, and running for political office.

12.2:Federal organizations have the job of implementation, they must convert policy into action. Administrative discretion is used in implementing the law to apply reasonable judgement, this is given by congress to the federal bureaucracy. Most agencies implement a law through: regulations, collecting revenues, and spending money for specific programs. Regulations are designed to convert policies into action by providing detailed instructions to government and the nation, what citizens can and cannot do. For example, The citizenship and immigration service rule tells citizens of other nations how long they can stay on a student visa. Regulations are drafted and reviewed under the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, which requires that all proposed regulations be published in the Federal Register. The process doesn’t end with final publication and enforcement but the regulations are subject to judicial review. The federal bureaucracy is responsible for collecting revenue: income taxes, fees on exports and imports, etc. The IRS collects 4 types of taxes: Individual income taxes, payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, and excise taxes(liquor, tobacco, gas, air-fare, luxury items.) The fed (federal reserve board) can also borrow money by selling Treasury notes or T-bills. Spending money can include writing checks for social security recipients, and medicare. Uncontrollable spending( pres and congress are unwilling to cut) go to these entitlement programs.

12.3:Most modern president believe they should be firmly in charge of federal employees because the president is responsible for executing the laws which is interpreted as full control over the basic decisions of government organizations. The president does have control over the powers of appointment, reorganization, and budgeting. Oversight is the ongoing effort to review programs to assure their faithful execution. The Office of management and Budget (OMB) is used in oversight. As central clearance, departments and agencies must get the president’s approval before testifying to congress on pending legislation, making proposals, or answering inquiries. The OMB tells the congress whether the bureaucracy’s request for legislation are in accordance with the president’s program. The Government accountability office or the congressional budget office is used to conduct an investigation of a particular program. The federal bureaucracy has bettered society by: reducing diseases, building a strong national defense, and increasing access to education. Citizens can make a difference in shaping regulations, and prompting congress to adopt needed reforms and they can support interest groups.

12.4:Public policy is a specific course of action that the government takes to address a problem like: global warming, health care, or unemployment. Public policy is set through laws and judicial decisions. Congress and the president enact the laws, while the bureaucracy puts the laws into effect through implementation. Since politics is defined as the interaction between people and the government, the policy makers are those who create the public policies. Distributive policy offers new benefits to all citizens, so national parks, air traffic control, and education funding. Redistributive policy are federal policies that take resources away from one or more groups in society so that another group can benefit, like welfare(zero-sum games). Finally, reverse-distributive policy takes resources from every group to solve a common problem by reducing benefits like social security.

12.5:The public policy process includes 8 steps: making assumptions about the problem at the beginning, setting the agenda of problems to be addressed, deciding to act, deciding how much to do, choosing a solution to the problem, deciding who will deliver the goods or services, passing a law and making regulations for implementation, and final implementation as an ongoing policy. NonDecision means that the policy process stops before final action, which can happen at any point in the process. In setting the policy agenda, the list of issues that the fed pays attention to, choosing the problem to be solved is crucial. The agenda is a direct reflection of the product of politics and the broad social goals embraced by the people and government. A think tank is an organization composed of scholars who study public policy and it influences the immediate agenda. The issue-attention cycle is the movement of public opinion toward public policy from initial enthusiasm for action to realization of costs and a decline in interest, example global warming. When deciding how much to do there is: incremental policy, making a small-scale adjustment in an existing program and punctuating policy, which makes a dramatic change in the government’s role. Punctuating policy often depends of alliances of citizens, interest groups, political parties, etc. Alliances called iron triangles exist for decades, issue networks come together for a specific cause and then disband. An iron triangle is composed of a federal department/ agency, a set of loyal interest groups, and a house or senate committee. Issue networks concentrate power in the relatively small number of individuals who organized and maintain them as the issue-attention cycles moves forward. The fed uses 3 tools to solve problems: making regulations to encourage or prohibit behavior through standards, incentives, or penalties, using taxes both to raise money and encourage certain behaviors, and spending money to purchase goods and services or provide benefits to the public as a whole or specific populations like older folks or kids. These solutions provide material benefits for people: new roads, bridges, schools, etc. Some policies are efforts to terminate a program, termination stops a policy that is already running which is hard to do since someone usually is benefiting from these policies.

12.6:Public policy is created through a process that engages citizens, interest groups, political parties, legislators, judges, and government institutions. Citizens can voice themselves by joining interest groups, writing letters or emails, confronting legislators at community meetings, and even running for office.

Vocabulary:

Bureaucracy- A form of organization that operates through impersonal, uniform rules and procedures.

Bureaucrat- A career government employee.

Department- Usually the largest organization in government; also the highest rank in federal hierarchy.

independent agency- A government entity that is independent of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

independent regulatory commission- A government agency or commission with regulatory power whose independence is protected by Congress.

government corporation- A government agency that operates like a business corporation, created to secure greater freedom of action and flexibility for a particular program.

Senior Executive Service- Established by Congress in 1978 as a flexible, mobile corps of senior career executives who work closely with presidential appointees to manage government.

civil service system- the merit system by which many federal bureaucrats are selected.

spoils system- A system of public employment based on rewarding party loyalists and friends.

Patronage- jobs, grants, or other special favors that are given as rewards to friends and political allies for their support.

merit system- A system of public employment in which selection and promotion depend on demonstrated performance rather than on political patronage.

Office of Personnel Management (OPM)- Agency that administers civil service laws, rules, and regulations.

Hatch Act- Federal statute barring federal employees from active participation in certain kinds of politics and protecting them from being fired on partisan grounds.

implementation - The process of putting a law into practice through bureaucratic rules or spending.

administrative discretion- Authority given by Congress to the federal bureaucracy to use reasonable judgment in implementing the laws.

Regulations- The formal instructions that government issues for implementing laws.

rule-making process- The formal process for making regulations.

uncontrollable spending- The portion of the federal budget that is spent on programs, such as Social Security, that the president and Congress are unwilling to cut.

entitlement program- Programs such as unemployment insurance, disaster relief, or disability payments that provide benefits to all eligible citizens.

Oversight- Legislative or executive review of a particular government program or organization.

central clearance- Review of all executive branch testimony, reports, and draft legislation by the Office of Management and Budget to ensure that each communication to Congress is in accordance with the president's program.

Public Policy- the course of action the government takes in response to an issue or problem

Politics- The interaction of the people and their government, including citizens, interest groups, political parties, and the institutions of the government - concerned with who gets what, when, where, and how from the government.

Distributive Property-A public policy such as Social Security that provides benefits to all groups in society.

Redistributive Property- A policy that provides to one group of society while taking away benefits for another through policy tools such as tax increases to pay for job training.

Zero-Sum Games- Policy that takes away exactly as much in benefits as another group gains.

Counterdistributive Policy- A policy that reduced benefits for all groups such as a tax increase in society, often by imposing rules that govern everyone.

Cost/Benefit Analysis- A study that compares the costs and benefits of a policy proposal to society for providing a public good.

Nondecision- A decision not to move ahead with the policy process. In short, it is a decision not to decide.

Policy Agenda- The list of issues that the federal government pays attention to.

Think Tank- A nongovernmental organization that seeks to influence public policy through research and education.

Issue-Attention Cycle- The movement of public opinion toward public policy from initial enthusiasm for action to realization of costs and a decline in interest.

Incremental Policy- Small adjustments to existing public policies.

Punctuating Policy- Radical changes to public policy that occur only after the mobilization of large segments of society to demand action (also called Comprehensive Policy).

Iron Triangle- A policy making instrument composed of a tightly related alliance of a congressional committee, interest groups, and a federal department or agency.

Issue Network- A policy-making alliance among loosely connected participants (interest groups, congressional committees, presidential aides, and other parties) that comes together on a particular issue, then disband.

Court Cases:There are no court cases in this chapter.