Chapter 15
This chapter discussed national economic and domestic policy-making by providing its historical context, forms, institutions, and ultimately procedures that have come to define macroeconomic and domestic management in the United States. First, it dealt with the establishment of the early colonies as economic joint stock ventures. The American economy grew slowly without much government intervention until after the Civil War as the government dealt mostly with the sale of public lands and the laying and collecting of imposts and excise taxes. Industrialization and mass transport technologies like steam and rail led to the emergence of macroeconomic regulation by the federal government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries culminating with the establishment of the FED (Federal Reserve Board) in 1913 and the Sixteenth Amendment’s allowance of a federal income tax. The world wars and the Great Depression’s New Deal led to the development of the permanent macro-level regulatory state and welfare provisioning system that we still have today.
In addition to the FED, other institutions like the CEA (Council on Economic Affairs), OMB (Office of Management and Budget) (formerly BoB: the Bureau of the Budget) and CBO (Congressional Budget Office) have been established to assist the president and the Congress in the creation of economic policy. This policy has followed different formations including Keynesian, monetarist, supply-side, and new economy approaches, but all of them have largely rejected the traditional conservatism of the past with its reliance on laissez-faire economic prescriptions. They differ from one another based on the degree to which they reject the past and employ the interventionist federal state as a macro-economic regulator.
The development of the welfare state has produced both social insurance and mean-tested programs operated at or at least through the federal government since the 1930s. The programs were expanded through the Great Society of the Johnson administration but have since suffered some retrenchment particularly during the Reagan years. The employment of the federal government as an education provider for the nation as a whole since the end of World War II has provided additional opportunities and constraints on federal power and role within the polity. Questions remain as to the ultimate impacts of the increasing entrenchment of the national debt coupled with an overall decline in future revenue sources due to persistent tax cutting since the 1960s, but it is clear that the federal government is here to stay as a guiding force in the construction of economic and social domestic policy.
The chapter includes a deliberative discussion over type of taxation ranging from progressive to regressive and flat tax formulations. In practice, it is revealed that the government uses all forms, but income taxes, a progressive version, have become the dominant means of revenue raising by the federal government in recent decades. It also reveals that there has also been some alteration in federal spending patterns as defense spending has declined as a percentage of GDP and as a portion of the annual budget, while entitlement spending (e.g. social insurance programs like social security and Medicare) has increased as well as debt servicing since the late 1960s.
Elder abuse is a growing problem in the United States that cuts across race, class, and geographic region. Despite our aging population, information about this problem remains scarce and unreliable. Contrary to media portrayals, the majority of elder abuse occurs in private homes where government’s reach is weakest. This issue lies at the heart of tension between liberty and security and at the crossroads of state and national governments. Begin your search by examining some of the resources available through the National Center for Elder Abuse (http://www.ncea.aoa.gov).”
After you have explored the national government’s resources for elder abuse, travel to your state’s Adult Protective Services website. Look for public service campaigns and other examples of agencies developed in your state to tackle this problem.
Once you have considered national and state resources, consider the best way to address this wide-spread national problem. Should federal law and agencies be created to coordinate the effort to stop elder abuse? Is this policy problem an example of the need for strong state government leadership? Or is the problem best approached through collaboration between the states’ and national government?
U.S. Budget
On this page, part of the U.S. Government Printing Office website, you will find the current budget of the federal government, including both internal general and specified analyses thereof.
OMB
This is the official website for the Office of Management and Budget, containing internal public documents relating to current and previous budgets.
Budget Explorer
At this site you will find independent external budgetary analysis, including prescriptions for limiting the national debt and deficit spending in general. It also shows trend lines regarding budgetary deficits/surpluses since the 1970s and provides a descriptive analysis of budgetary allocations so that you can find out what your tax dollars are being spent on by the federal government.
Military versus Non-Military Budgetary Portions
At this site you will find a critical commentary on the role of defense spending’s impact on the budget as a whole, particularly the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars—be advised this is an ideologically charged site that is liberal in orientation; it has a negative perspective relative to the military, implying that it consumes too much of the budget in any given year. It also is showing that the wars’ respective budgets are, in fact, only a minority portion of the defense budget, where much of it goes to procurement policies that are unrelated to U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Social Security Administration
This is the official site for the Social Security Agency, with contact information, access to analytical reports about problems, and projections regarding solvency and other issues.
Entitlements Spending
This article is a critical commentary on the expansion of federal social programs in recent years, with prescriptions as to how to slow their further advance: this is an ideological commentary that is conservative in orientation and portrays a general opposition to social service provisioning.
Federal Social Programs
On this website you will find of the various social programs offered by the federal government; this is a useful site for basic research into this area of inquiry.
Social Work and Service Programs
At this site you will find a ranked listing of social work and social service programs around the country for those of you interested in pursuing this as a career path.
CBO
This is the home website for the Congressional Budget Office whose purpose it is to analyze the federal annual budget proposal put forth by the president according to priorities set by the Congress. It also contains a regularly updated blog by the Director of the CBO, which is informative as to the congressional bureaucracy’s position relative to presidential policy proposals as they are manifested in the budget.
Federal Reserve System
This website provides information about the Federal Reserve System, a regulatory agency in charge of monetary policy.
Internal Revenue Service
This is the website for the Internal Revenue Service. Access this site for any questions regarding tax law or policies.
Tax Foundation
This is the website for the nonpartisan research group, Tax Foundation, which educates citizens about tax policy.
Social Security Administration
This site is the main Web page for the Social Security Administration that provides basic information on benefits, social security taxes, contact information, and major announcements relative to retirement issues.
TANF
This is a site sponsored by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that provides an overview of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program that replaced AFDC in the wake of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. It is a good place for basic information as well as some analytical inquiry into the often divisive issue of social welfare.
U.S. Department of Education
This is the main Web page for the U.S. Department of Education providing information on federal grants, initiatives, and mandates regarding public education at all levels.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
This site provides access to information on social programs administered, funded, or partially administered/funded by the U.S. government.
U.S. Department of Labor
This site is the main Web page for the Department of Labor containing access to information on the state of the U.S. economy and federal initiatives in the area of jobs and unemployment.
U.S. Department of Commerce
This is the main Web page for the U.S. Department of Commerce which provides information on the state of the economy and federal initiatives in the area of business and entrepreneurship.
U.S. Department of the Treasury
This site is for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and is an invaluable resource for information on the American domestic and international economies.
Department of Labor Videos
This site, part of the U.S. Department of Labor, has several video clips that provide synopses of various government programs relating to labor issues.
Budget Videos
Several videos gathered by Yahoo! Finance detail budget announcements and reactions to the announcements over the last few years. The site is updated regularly thus its content is subject to some flux.
President Obama on Economy
This site is a video clip containing President Obama’s assessment of the economic woes in the Great Recession of the late 2000’s. It also contains a summary of his proposals for re-building the American macro-economy.
Humorous portrayal of Obama and the economy by Jon Stewart
This site contains a clip from The Daily Show by liberal comedian Jon Stewart.