How Federal Budgets Come to Be

¶ … federal bureaucracies accountable for their actions? How are they held accountable? In general terms, there are a number of ways by which federal bureaucracies are held accountable. One example would be the President holding Cabinet members responsible for the actions or inactions of their agency employees and personnel.

For example, if someone "drops the ball" at the Veteran Affairs Administration, the Internal Revenue Service or other agencies, the people that lead that organization is supposed to be regulating that behavior (or dealing with misdeeds) and the person who appointed the leader (usually the President) will be the first line of defense. There are also regulatory and review committees in Congress that exercise oversight at one level or another in terms of spending, actions, inactions, compliance with the law and so forth.

Lastly, there is the American voter and the public opinion movements among the taxpayers and citizens. Indeed, if the people who are voted into power are not playing their part in the oversight process, they can be voted out in either a primary or general election. Agency heads or employees can be fired if they are not bound to their office or position via an election or a contract. Further, anyone in the chain (elected or appointed) can be charged criminally for their actions or inactions.

For example, Richard Nixon could have been charged for what he did but that was foregone because he stepped down. 2. Describe the process by which the federal budget is developed. The process starts with the budgetary requests and preferences of the President, whomever that might be at the time. Right now, that would be Barack Obama. The budget would include everything that requires payment or funds such as interest on the national debt, programs that are automatically part of any new budget (e.g.

Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and the items that can be added or removed every year welfare, military spending and so forth. After the President weighs in, Congress (the House and the Senate) has to come up with a Congressional budget resolution. Once the resolution is decided upon, it has to be enacted by Congress via passage in both houses of the legislature.

If there is any difference in discord in the versions that are passed by the two houses, they meet up and hammer out those differences until a singular and complete budget framework is defined and finalized. If this process breaks down or simply does not happen, then the parameters of the last resolution passed would still be binding (Patterson, 2013). 3. How do state and local governments obtain revenue? Include examples in your explanation. State and local governments vary quite a bit in terms of how they get revenue.

However, there are common threads that exist in many to most places. For example, most states use income tax rates that are somewhat or very similar to the federal taxation way of doing things. However, some states (e.g. Texas) do not do an income tax because they get their revenue from other sources. Other common taxes would include sales taxes that are tacked onto the sale of goods in stores.

Owners of homes and other properties commonly pay property taxes and that money commonly goes to things like funding schools and the like. There are also the fines and things for things like parking and traffic tickets. Beyond that, there are fines levied for code enforcement and similar things or fees for things like licenses for businesses and so forth. In short, every state and locality has their own way of doing things but they basically done the same general way regardless of who is doing it.

The details may vary a bit in some situations but the overall framework and intention is almost always the same (Patterson, 2013). 4. President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Define the term MIC. Summarize the concerns of President Eisenhower relating to the MIC. Describe the economic impact of the MIC on the American economy. Eisenhower was referring to the idea that a government can get too dedicated and allocated too much power to military.