Federal programs Essay

finishedout the twentieth century, relation has established a neat come of federal political platforms administered by agencies deep down the Executive limb. Through this form of a wide-ranging allocation of chest to the executive Branch, relation has assisted in creating a massive Federal Bureaucracy. The family relationship of relation to the Executive Branch instantly mustinessiness thence be seen in terms of its relation to this Bureaucracy, as s tumesce as its relation to the Presidency.In ramble to gain virtually hear every organize the trading trading operations of the mixed agencies which had been established at bottom the Executive Branch, in 1946 congress began to embeder a sequence of configurations and modus operandis designed to pull off the Administration. This forge was excessively k this instantn as congressional prudence. There atomic image 18 some(prenominal) methods with which congressional misunderstanding operations take place th e charge process, congressional administrative offices, casework, as hale as a fig of administrative praxiss.Where the congressional everyplacesight functions take place, there argon three types of commissions authorizations committals, appropriations committees, and political operations committees. The beginning(a) type of committee is the functional committee which initially establishes or authorizes the plan or force. In the case of a war machine programme, this would be the Armed Services Committees in both chambers. In the case of an urban program, this would be the Banking, Finance and Urban personal business Committee in the House and the Banking, caparison and Urban affairs Committee in the Senate.Similarly, from all(prenominal) match little(prenominal) program area deep down the Federal Bureaucracy is related to at least one detail all important(p) standing committee in each chamber of Congress. (Issa, 2011) In attempting to follow the backsliding a ctivities through and through these authorization committees, a number of complications are very much encountered. bingle of these is the exit from the fact that a bad-tempered political agency whitethorn fall within the authority of several various realistic committees or subcommittees. As a result, the agency may play one committee or subcommittee against the other in ramble to achieve those results in Congress which ladder to benefit the agency the close to. (Office of The Law alteration Counsel, 2012)Another difficulty is that a committee which establishes a program is very much clock times to a fault involved with the outcome of its own efforts to be willing to investigate adequately the operations of the program it has initiated. One of the roughly literal places where an amount of oversight activity takes place is in the appropriations process. The cipher for an agency must be ratified a clean each year. One might assume that this p.a. appropriations proc ess would lead to a sure annual inspection of the budgets of all the various political agencies. (Issa, 2011) This is not the case. The federal budget is so great and compound that it is unaccept suit able to consider carefully the budget of each agency and program on a year-to-year basis. What happens or else is that budgets are practically routinely approved from year to year with world-wide reviews exactly occurring sporadically. In addition, some(prenominal) agencies go bad quite close relationships with the subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees which particular(prenominal)ally regard with their agency. These agencies are therefore often able to abstract some particular(prenominal)(prenominal) favors from these particular appropriations subcommittees.The Senate Committee on regimeal Affairs and the House Committee on Governmental Reform were initially established to get laid congressional concern over governmental processes. Thus, many see these committ ees as an high-flown place for maintaining congressional observation over the activities of the vast Bureaucracy located within the Executive Branch. However, because of jurisdictional differences and because of the hesitancy of most representatives and senators to provide for satisfactory independent oversight activities, the efforts of these governmental operations committees take away been quite restricted.The three administrative offices within Congress are apply to some purpose in the congressional oversight process. The full world(a) Accounting Office, The GAO has the account office, not simply for perform accounting audits, but also for adjudicate how various programs are being managed. In other words, the GAO often performs the task of program assessment. The GAO plays a signifi give the gatet role in congressional oversight. The congressional seek Service, time preparing themes and studies to assist members of Congress, the CRS sometimes includes some selective entropy on the activities and routines of various governmental agencies.This is other important acknowledgment of oversight development for members of Congress. The Congressional Budget Office gathers schooling on the budgets of the various governmental agencies and to report on immature budgetary requirements and propositions that are made through the Executive Branchs Office of Management and Budget. budgetary information is an extremely important source of data upon which the various congressional committees fanny judge the in effect(p)ness of detail governmental programs.Granting, the information gathered by the CBO may seem to permit for substantial congressional oversight, the fact is that it is the agencies that often use this informational affiliation for their own purposes in pursuing their requests for extra funding directly to the congressional committee, instead of directing all their communications through the OMB. This short circuits the use of the OMB as one of the Presidents management tools. Efficiency, from an world(a) standpoint, we can see that these three congressional offices.The General Accounting Office, the Congressional Research Services, and the Congressional Budget Office urinate with the rounds of individual congresspersons and senators and the staffs of congressional committees are able to supply our national legislators with vast amounts of information and evaluations of governmental activities. In fact, the United States Congress has available to it one of the most wide research staffs of any national legality-makers in the world. (Issa, 2011) Nevertheless, the availability of information and con alone is not sufficient for effective congressional oversight.The desire to follow through on this available information is some other necessary ingredient and it is this ingredient which is often lacking. Many times congressional oversight is limited by the worries of various congressional committees and subcommitt ees over their particular jurisdictions and in a substantial number of instances, the burdens of organized special interests also interfere with the ability or wishes of members of Congress to significantly oversee governmental operations. Aside from these problems, there are also the boundaries of time.Congresspersons are loaded with extremely intricate schedules. They have a large number of often conflicting responsibilities to perform. Representatives and senators must therefore place priorities on the use of their time. ofttimes oversight activities lose in this shamble of priorities to legislative activities, to the creation of new programs to comprehend with current problems, and to casework concerns. Representatives and senators, themselves, do not comm tho become directly involved in much casework or fundamental services. It is their staff that deals with these matters.However, representatives and senators are usually informed by their staffs of many of these problems, a nd it is through these specific interactions that these legislators often get the most intense burden as to the effectualness of many governmental programs. Casework thus provides an important source of direct, specific information which proves very useful in congressional oversight activities. Congress has also passed some major reforms and reconnoitered a number of major legislative techniques, many of which have had the effect of enlightening congressional oversight. sunshine Laws.During the 1970s, Congress attempted to open up many facets of governmental operations to the general public. This was done through the Freedom of training Act and the Government in self-restraint Act. By making information to a greater extent broadly available to the public, these acts also cast up the amount of information available to Congress. The Congressional Veto. Very often Congress passes quite broad pieces of legislation. It is then up to specific agencies to fill in the detail of thes e laws, both with regard to the building of governmental agencies and the processes which they follow.One might note for example that charm Congress passes general tax laws, the details of the regulations regarding the payment of federal taxes is to be found not in the tax law itself but rather in the inside Revenue Code which is highly-developed by the Internal Revenue Service, which is an executive agency. The problem that were presented by the executive agencies developing a great many regulations or codes is that the only way Congress is able to partake these details is through the passage of new legislative acts.As we have seen, this is often a burdensome and prolonged process. In hallow to avoid this, Congress now writes into some authorization bills requirements for a congressional veto. According to this procedure, when an agency disseminates rules filling in the details of congressional legislation, Congress mechanically has the power within a specific time period to ve to some of these rules and to demand that the agency fill in the details in a different way. The important thing is that Congress can do this without having to go through the process of passing a new law.Although this procedure is rarely used, it does offer the prospective for a far greater legislative control over the procedures by which the Bureaucracy operates. sunset(a) Legislation. In starting governmental programs or agencies, Congress usually sets no time limit on the functioning of the program or agency. Since the 1970s, a practice developed by which Congress authorizes the being of a program or agency for only a inadequate amount of time. In other words, Congress specifies a control by which the agency or program will conclude to function.In order for the agency to continue its operations aft(prenominal) that time, a new bill must be passed allowing its continued existence for other specified period of time. This practice is evidently intended to avert the continued e xistence of agencies or programs which no longer fill up a sure need or which fail to gather a legitimate need effectively. A dissimilarity on sunset legislation is the procedure of annual authorization. According to this procedure, the continued existence of governmental agency must be approved on a year-to-year basis.While this practice obviously creates tremendous difficulties in the ability of such an agency to engage in long-term planning, it does suggestively increase the potential effectiveness of congressional control. vigor Based Budgeting (ZBB). Zero Based Budgeting is a technique through which administrators must carefully justify their absolute agencies budgets. Zero based budgeting requires a repeated top-to-bottom assessment of all agencies programs designed to vouch their cost effectiveness. (Issa, 2011) We can see that many structures and techniques have been developed to allow Congress to be more effective in its oversight activities.However, jurisdictional disputes and pressures from various well organized special interests continue to hold on these new techniques and sources of information from being used effectively. In many occurrences, the actual constitution and effect of government policy depends less on the actions of our elected officials than it does on the activities of non-elected bureaucrats who often remain totally immune from the pressures of the general publicalthough not necessarily from those of well-organized special interests.One of the major political issues find our national future is the question of how well our government is able to represent effectively the needs and desires of the American people. As we have noted, the role of Congress as a representative of the people was one of the most important functions of this first branch of government envisioned by the Founders when they drafted the Constitution. However, the many new needs which our national government has had to meet in this century have rigid t his role of representation under great stress.