The Bureaucracy…

 Congress creates agencies  Influences agency behavior by statutes it enacts  Congress authorizes funds for programs  Congressional appropriations provides funds for the agency to spend on its programs  Funds can’t be spent unless also appropriated  Appropriations = money formally set aside for specific use

 Appropriations Committee may be the most powerful of all the congressional committees  Most expenditure recommendations are approved by House  Tends to recommend n amount lower than the agency requested  Has power to influence an agency’s policies by “marking up” an agency’s budget  But becoming less powerful ▪ Trust funds operate outside the regular government budget and are not controlled by the appropriations committees (Social Security being the largest) ▪ Annual authorizations allow the legislative committees greater oversight ▪ Budget deficits have necessitated cuts

 Informal congressional controls over agencies  Individual members of Congress can seek privileges for constituents  Congressional committees may seek committee clearance, the right to pass on certain agency decisions

 Definition: a requirement that an executive decision must lie before Congress for a specified period before it takes effect ▪ Usually days  Declared unconstitutional by Supreme Court in Chadha (1983) ▪ Congress can’t take action that has force of law w/o executive consent  Debate about the legislative veto continues…

 Power inferred from the congressional power to legislate  Means for checking agency discretion and also for authorizing agency actions independent of presidential preferences

 Red tape – complex and sometimes conflicting rules  Conflict – agencies work at cross-purposes  Duplication – two or more agencies seem to do the same thing  Imperialism – tendency of agencies to grow, irrespective of programs’ benefits and costs  Waste – spending more than is necessary to buy some product or service *Each complaint has logical origins in the constitutional order and policy-making process *Some exaggerations and unusual circumstances generate difficulties

 Numerous attempts to make the bureaucracy work better for less money  Eleven reform attempts in the 1900s  Prior reforms stressed increasing centralized control on behalf of efficiency, accountability, and consistency  National Performance Review (NPR) in 1993 designed to reinvent government calling for a new kind of organizational culture ▪ Less centralized management ▪ More employee initiatives ▪ Fewer detailed rules, more customer satisfaction

 Most rules and red tape are due to struggles between president and Congress or to agencies’ efforts to avoid alienating influential voters  Periods of divided government worsen matters, especially in implementing policy  Presidents of one party seek to increase political control (executive micromanagement)  Congresses of another party respond by increasing investigations and rules (legislative micromanagement)

 Government in the Sunshine Act (1976)  Required for 1 st time all multithreaded federal agencies hold their meetings regularly in public session  Freedom of Information Act (1966)  Required federal govt agencies, with some exceptions, to disclose to individuals at their request any information about them contained in govt files.  Many curbs on the public’s access to information since 9/11  Thousands of documents removed from internet sites, libraries, etc, in the name of national security. All states also have similar laws!