Political Theory And The Budget

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Week 6 Discussion 2: Political Theory and the Budget

Required Resources
Read/review the following resources for this activity:

  • Textbook: Review Chapter 2, 3 (pp. 56-59), 13
  • Lesson
  • Additional scholarly sources you identify through your own research

Textbook:

Magstadt, T. (2017). Understanding Politics: Ideas, institutions, and issues (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage.

 Instructions:
Explain how a liberal and conservative would approach developing the US budget. Use evidence (cite sources) to support your response from assigned readings or online lessons, and at least TWO outside scholarly sources.

Lastly, to look at a REAL U.S. Budget (2015), and see what discretionary and mandatory spending are, and also to see how much is really spent in the budget, and on what, follow this link. The info is really good. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

 

Writing Requirements

  • APA format for in-text citations and list of references. Please use proper APA citations on paper and reference page to get full credit.

Lesson:

Week 6 Lesson: Economics

This week we will explore the economy, including the impact that governments have upon economic matters and the cost of welfare programs.

The US Budget

In February of each year, the President submits around a $3.8 trillion budget proposal to Congress for approval. This proposal is based on the President’s priorities, and what he believes will pass in the Congress. Once the plan is made public, interest groups, citizens, scholars, political scientists, and pundits begin to scrutinize it to see what spending will go where.

The American economic system is very complicated. It is considered a laissez-faire economy, but this does not mean that it operates in an entirely free market. There are rules and regulations in place to protect the market, and the businesses and people working within it. Some of these safeguards developed during a period known as the New Deal, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a means of lessening the impact of the Great Depression. These protections are referred to as the social safety net or welfare programs.

Welfare is a term applied to social programs that contribute to the overall well-being of the citizens, and these types of programs usually develop when there is a great need within the populace. For example, during The Great Depression, inflation rates made the dollar lose its previous value. The Great Depression resulted in the suffering of a large portion of the population because many could not pay their bills, or buy necessities such as food which was in short supply to being with. Eventually, technological advances, spurred by the Industrial Revolution, made the farming process less difficult, allowing for larger and larger amounts of crops to be produced. Although this produced more food for a while, it also dropped the price of food, given the fundamental law of supply and demand. If the supply of a product rises above the demand for the product, prices will fall.

Supply and Demand

With the fall in crop prices, farmers who had mortgaged their homes and land to afford new farming equipment lost it all because they could no longer earn enough to pay off their loans. Also, the new technology contributed to overfarming much of the land, which stripped needed nutrients from the soil, making it unfarmable for some time, developing The Dust Bowl. With the upper layer of soil missing from much of the farmland in the Midwest, the large amount of dust caused great dust storms as severe as blizzards. Food production suffered because of limited farmland, causing supply to decrease, raising the price of food again. However, given the state of inflation during this time, the average person could not keep up with these costs forcing the government to step in to provide for the people and stabilize prices.

Although welfare programs serve purposes, they are not free. The problem of paying for them falls on every nation that offers them, which is why there is always much deliberation regarding these programs. The United States offers far fewer social programs than its European allies—based upon its laissez-faire approach—and yet there is always much discussion about their existence. American conservatives tend to support a reduction in the funding of such programs, whereas liberals usually argue for an increase in their funding.

Cargo containers with Chines and American flags on them

From the US budget to negotiating with China on tariffs, it is no doubt economics is essential. Economics has become even more critical as our society has globalized, making the world smaller. It is harder to find specific products with the “Made in the USA” label as businesses are outsourcing many manufacturing jobs to other nations to provide lower prices. The US, the only superpower, continues to be part of the global political economy.

The Global Political Economy

Men in maze

The paths that take nations to democracy are rarely straight, and never identical. The same can be said for those societies opting to embrace a market economy. The most successful economic system currently is capitalism, but capitalism has evolved and continues to grow differently in various countries around the world. Political scientists measure these changes alongside the systems’ roots in, and influence on, the political world.

For half of the last century, many countries around the world operated under an economic system different from capitalism. The Cold War between the communist Soviet Union and the Western capitalist world has guided much of the international and domestic politics of the past 60 years. As communism eroded in the face of global markets, however, even the largest of the communist superpowers (Russia and China) moved toward market-based economies. Capitalist countries have also seen changes in the market over the past 75 years. The “free market” does not exactly exist in any democratic state because concerns about social well-being have caused most governments to establish some safety net to protect populations from the harsh realities of the market. Programs such as Social Security are examples of this safety net in the United States.

Theoretical distinctions can be made between different democratic countries and their economic development. An example of such a difference presented in the field of political science categorizes countries’ financial systems based on how active the government is in the economy. Esping-Anderson (1990) writes that these economies can be categorized as laissez-faire, corporatist, or social democratic. Laissez-faire economies are those that remain most closely tied to the free market. Governments in these states have little democratic control over the economy and tend to allow the market to control prices and income distribution. Corporatist economies have strong centralized governments attempting to balance income distribution and market concerns between the free population and the private sector. Social-democratic countries are those in which the government owns many social services and heavily regulates private industry.

As you might imagine, with so many different economies operating in the world, the international sphere as a whole has an economy of its own. Countries have to compete for business, and businesses have to compete for consumers. Trade agreements and restrictions are established to make these competitions equitable and productive. As Russia and China become increasingly dominant on the world economic stage, the international political and economic landscape will continue to change. The emergence of new economic powers is not the only pressure on the international economy, however. Political issues such as wages, immigration, export controls, taxes, and employment all factor into decisions that impact global markets. Citizens are going to have to make difficult decisions relating to many concerns of this new global environment in the coming years. Should national sovereignty be given to international organizations? Should businesses that pay low wages in other countries be allowed to import goods? Must governments ultimately regulate the economy, or can the free market solve these problems without interference?

Summary

It seems clear that economics are closely tied to politics and that decisions regarding regulation of economic matters have a direct impact on a government’s success.

Reference

References

Congressional Budget Office. (2017). The Federal budget in 2017. Retrieved from https://www.cbo.gov/publication/53624

Esping-Anderson, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Hoboken, NJ.: John Wiley & Sons.

Has The Electoral College Outlived Its Usefulness?

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Ohio’s delegation to the Electoral College certify their votes in the Columbus statehouse in December 2004.

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Has the Electoral College Outlived Its Usefulness?

The Electoral College is a perennial debate topic

05 October 2007

Two scholars debate the pros and cons of the Electoral College, the system by which each state appoints electors who choose the U.S. president after the popular vote has been cast. Ross K. Baker makes the case for retaining the Electoral College as it was established by the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Baker is a professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Jamie Raskin presents the arguments for adapting the Electoral College system to ensure that election results reflect the national popular vote. Raskin is a Maryland state

senator and a professor of constitutional law at American University in Washington, D.C. He introduced legislation that made Maryland the first state in the country to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

PRO

The Electoral College: Still Useful in the 21st Century By Ross K. Baker

On the evening of November 7, 2000, the newly elected Democratic senator from the state of New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton, addressed a cheering crowd of supporters in Manhattan and vowed to go to Washington and work to abolish the “archaic and undemocratic” Electoral College that had failed to produce a clear­cut winner in the presidential election.

No one thought of pointing out to her that the institution to which she had just been elected, the U.S. Senate, was both archaic (it was established in 1789) and undemocratic (each state, irrespective of its population, is represented by two senators). If we apply to the U.S. Constitution the standard that all of its provisions be modern and democratic, there in fact would not be much left of this very durable and successful plan of government.

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The U.S. Constitution is full of features that some critics would consider outmoded, including the system of federalism whereby the national government shares power with the 50 states. It would probably be more efficient for the United States to be run exclusively from the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., but the men who wrote the Constitution did not think of efficiency as a priority. They valued liberty much more highly and felt it was safer to fragment political power. One feature of that fragmentation is that the national, or federal, government shares power with the states.

One important aspect of American federalism is the inclusion of the 50 states, as states, in the selection of the president. This system — the Electoral College — gives every state a number of electoral votes equivalent to the combined number of its members in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, where states receive seats proportionate to their population. The presidential candidate who is able to win the popular vote in a number of states whose electoral votes constitute a majority of all electoral votes (currently 270 out of 538) becomes president.

Critics of this system argue for the simplicity of direct election. You just count up the votes nationally, ignoring the vote totals in the individual states, and declare a winner. If the United States adopted such a system, candidates would have an incentive to campaign only in the most populous states and seek to get the largest number of votes in those places, ignoring states with smaller populations.

The Electoral College forces candidates to reach out beyond the large population centers and campaign in places that would be ignored in a direct election system. It would be possible, in theory at least, for candidates to campaign only in the 12 most populous states and win the presidency. That means that candidates would have every reason to ignore the other 38. But under the Electoral College system, it would be highly unlikely that any candidate could win enough electoral votes by campaigning only in the 12 most populous states. A Democratic presidential candidate could probably count on winning New York, California, and Massachusetts. And a Republican would likely win the electoral votes of Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia. In order to win the minimum 270 electoral votes necessary to go to the White House, however, each would need to capture not only the larger so­called swing states — places such as Ohio and Florida where party strength is more evenly divided — but also states with smaller populations. Since all states are guaranteed at least three electoral votes, candidates cannot afford to neglect even these places.

The Electoral College also makes it much less likely that a strictly regional candidate will be elected, since no single region of the United States contains enough electoral votes to choose a president. Critics of the Electoral College system dwell strictly on the number of voters; defenders of the system point to the distribution of those votes and whether they are drawn from a broad cross­section of states and regions of the country.

Throughout American history, the Electoral College system also has made it more difficult for minor party or third­party candidates to be successful in presidential races. Some critics of the present system might point to this as a negative feature of U.S. politics, but the two­party system has served the United States well. By imposing a degree of moderation on American politics, the two­party system has been a major factor in the country’s stability. It discourages extremist movements, but, at the same time, if a minor party or candidate proposes ideas that prove popular with the voters, one of the major

 

 

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A Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice is sworn in at the Electoral College proceedings in Harrisburg in December 2004.

parties probably will adopt them. An extremist candidate might be able to win the popular vote and the electoral votes in a few states — as happened with Strom Thurmond and his segregationist States Rights party in the 1948 election — but would be unlikely to win the presidency. There is room for protest in American politics under the Electoral College system, but extremism is discouraged.

Furthermore, while political extremism is discouraged by the Electoral College system, racial and ethnic minority groups are actually empowered by it. Hispanics, for example, constitute only about 12 percent of the U.S. population and an even smaller share of the electorate. In a direct­election system, their influence would be greatly reduced, but their numbers are large enough in some states to have considerable influence. In Arizona, which has tended to be a political swing state, the percentage of Hispanics is about 25 percent, or double the national average, giving this minority group much more political influence under the Electoral College system than it otherwise would have. Likewise, in a state such as Virginia, African Americans number almost 20 percent of the population and, thus, make the politics of that state much more competitive.

Finally, there is the larger question of the health of the federal system. The writers of the Constitution saw in the division of power between the national and state governments an important safeguard for individual freedoms, yet the trend over recent years has been for the federal government to assume more and more power in areas that traditionally have been the responsibility of the states. To diminish the influence of the states even further by abolishing the Electoral College would undercut one of the main pillars of a political system that has withstood the challenges that have faced it over 220 years of American history.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.

CON

Let’s Use the Electoral College to Give the United States a National Popular Vote for President By Jamie Raskin

As Americans, it is in our character to promote democracy and sweeping political reform all over the world.

Back at home, we are more reticent. We call our election practices “democracy” without ever measuring them against our democratic principles, much less the best practices that have emerged in other nations.

This complacency is embarrassing in light of the fact that some of our current electoral practices reflect the nation’s beginnings in a far less democratic context.

 

 

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The most dramatic example is in how we choose our president, a convoluted process that turns all the major principles of democracy on their heads. Consider how the basic precepts of democracy are capsized in a U.S. presidential election:

• The majority rules — but not in our presidential elections. Majority rule is the heart of political democracy, but in the United States it is not the winner of the national popular vote who becomes president. It is the winner of the Electoral College, a system by which each state appoints a certain number of “electors” who then choose the president. In the much­publicized election of 2000, Vice President Al Gore beat Governor George W. Bush by more than 500,000 votes in the national popular tally but lost in the Electoral College because of a last­minute, 537­vote margin in Florida. Popular­vote losers have prevailed in the Electoral College in three other elections, and there are many near­miss elections in which a small shift of popular votes would have propelled popular­vote losers to the White House.

• The people vote for their president — but not in the United States. Here, the people vote for the electors from states who then choose the president. Of course, most people believe that they are voting for the president.

• Every vote counts equally — but not in the weird arithmetic of the Electoral College, where a citizen’s vote in Delaware or North Dakota is mathematically worth far more (measured by the ratio of voters to the state’s electors) than a single vote in larger states like California or Texas or New York. But if you weight the votes by the likelihood that voters will actually have an impact on who wins a state’s electors, the arbitrariness changes and the disparities grow even more striking. For example, in 2004 the presidential election was settled by a 365­vote difference in the state of New Mexico but by a 312,043­vote difference in Utah, meaning that a voter in New Mexico was hundreds of times more likely to influence the appointment of electors than a voter in Utah.

• Every voter should have an equal incentive to vote — but in the United States we don’t. The vast majority of people live in states that are considered “safe” areas where the Republicans or Democrats have a presumptive lock on the state’s presidential electors. Two­thirds of the states have thus become fly­over territory as the candidates rush to the dwindling band of “swing” states. In the last two election cycles, the two parties spent 99 percent of their campaign resources on a mere 16 states and an astonishing 70 percent in five states. Most of us — including people living in Texas, New York, and California, three of the four largest states — are spectators to the real campaign that takes place in Florida and Ohio and a handful of other states. The bypassing of most of the country depresses turnout in the forgotten states. Voter turnout in the general election approaches 70 percent in swing states but hovers in the low­50s in demoralized spectator states, driving our national turnout rates down to among the lowest on earth.

What can be done about the perverse dynamics of our presidential elections? Public opinion polls have long shown that upwards of 65 percent of Americans favor a direct national popular vote for president in which all of our votes count the same regardless of geography. People want the president to represent all Americans, not a patchwork of states stitched together through partisan manipulation. The puzzle has been how to reconcile the instinctive desire for a national popular election with the antique mechanics of the Electoral College, a vexed institution that Thomas Jefferson called “the most

 

 

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dangerous blot on our Constitution.”

But now the state of Maryland has taken a bold and historic step to show how we can use the Electoral College to get to a national popular vote for president. On April 10, 2007, Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law a plan to have Maryland enter and launch an interstate compact in which all member states agree to cast their Electoral College votes for the winner of the national popular vote. The agreement takes effect when it is enacted by a number of states representing a majority of electoral votes (270). The plan, which passed overwhelmingly in the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates, has passed in a dozen state legislative chambers already and in both chambers in California, Hawaii, and Illinois. It is being driven by the sense that our presidential elections depart dramatically from “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

The National Popular Vote plan rests on the powers that states have to create interstate compacts and to appoint electors. Article II, Section I, of the U.S. Constitution provides: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors.” This power has been deployed by legislatures in different ways. When the nation began, the legislatures mostly named electors directly. The Electoral College operated as a deliberative body and each elector voted his conscience. In 1800, for example, Maryland saw seven of its electors vote for Adams and four for Jefferson. When states began to award their electors in winner­take­all fashion based on a statewide popular vote, smaller states complained that this newfangled “unit” bloc voting diluted the power of small states (and they were right). They sued — and lost. In Delaware v. New York (1966), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the challenge, emphasizing that the states’ power to award electors may be exercised in any manner they see fit. The state’s power is total, “plenary.”

Thus, from California to New Jersey, from Texas to Utah, our legislatures — led by the spectator states — can now unite and use their constitutional powers to give the United States something we have promoted for the rest of the world but never achieved at home: a truly national election for president based on principles of majority rule, one person­one vote, and every vote counting equally. Such an election will revitalize our lethargic low­turnout democracy by energizing tens of millions of currently superfluous voters. It will also bring us into line with the way democracies all over the world elect their presidents.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov)

KEYWORDS:   Ross K. Baker,  Jamie Raskin,  Electoral College,  U.S. Senate,  vote,  president, U.S. Constitution,  House of Delegates,  American history,  U.S. Supreme Court,  U.S. politics

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Identification Of A Policy Alternative

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Project: Part 4: Identification of a Policy Alternative

As an astute social worker and professional policy advocate, once you have selected and identified a social problem, you begin the process of creating and implementing a policy that addresses that social problem. One of the first things you do in the implementation process is an analysis of the social policy you identified. There is always the possibility that the policy created and implemented to address the social problem you identified is not viable for a variety of reasons. In this case, you must explore a policy alternative.

In Part 4 of your ongoing Social Change Project assignment, you identify a policy alternative to the social problem you identified.

By Day 7

Complete Part 4 of your Social Change Project.

Address the following items within a 3-4 page paper:

· What is the policy alternative?

· What, if any, change(s) in the policy alternative are necessary and where will they need to occur (local, state, national, and international)?

· Is this policy alternative congruent with social work values? Explain.

· What is the feasibility of the alternative policy (political, economic, and administrative)?

· Does the policy alternative meet the policy goals (e.g., social equality, redistribution of resources, social work values, and ethics)?

· What are the forces that are for/against the policy?

· What policy advocacy skills can be used to support the policy alternative?

· How does the current policy affect clinical social work practice with clients?

· What changes could be made in the policy to support the needs of clients seeking clinical services?

· Provide an update on the advocacy activities your proposed in the Week 6 Assignment.

What is meant by the term “positive government”?

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POLITICAL SCIENCE 310: MID-TERM EXAMINATION

 

PLEASE ANSWER TWO OF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

 

1. In the introduction, Lehne suggests that a new “social compact” between business and society/government should be forged. What does he mean by that remark? What was the previous compact and, what changes does Lehne suggest will put the United States in a better position to solve problems? Discuss the social compact for another country. Which would you argue is likely to yield a more favorable outcome, the current US example or, that of the other nation? Discuss what you would regard as an appropriate social compact for the America of the 21st century. On what basis did you devise that construct? Explain, considering what you know about the prevailing social and constitutional landscapes.

 

2. In Chapter 2 of the Lehne text there is discussion provided of both roles of government (framework, promotional, regulatory and social service) and models of business/government relationship (business dominance, market, stakeholder, pluralism). Select the governmental role-type and model that you feel has been applied to solve a problem in the 21st century. Discuss the problem, the policy that was enacted to solve it and, how it reflected a government role and relationship model. Would you have selected that policy? Why? Why not?

 

3. Corporations enjoyed considerable popularity when they first began to appear in the 19th century. To what would you attribute their popularity? What developments contributed to their decline in popularity? What is their status today, in your opinion? Explain. Considering the reasons stated for their unpopularity, what would you suggest government do to effect positive change?

 

4. What is meant by the term “positive government”? When did positive government emerge in the United States? What brought it about? Would you characterize the government of the United States as positive in the first decade of the 21st century? Explain. Has it been more or less positive in the second decade? Explain. What role has the Constitution and distribution of political power had to do with the conditions of the first and second decades of the 21st century, respectively?

 

5. Who was John Maynard Keynes? How does his approach to macroeconomic management depart from the previous status quo? How was American society transformed to make the Keynesian approach more salient than its predecessor? How was the Keynesian approach manifest in macroeconomic policymaking? If you were advising the government of the United States would you suggest more or, less, Keynesianism? Explain. Is the US government likely to become more or, less Keynesian in the coming 12 months? Explain.

 

6. Select any public policy problem that exists in the United States today. Is the optimal problem solving mechanism for that issue political or economic, in your opinion? Explain. Has the actual means used to address it been more political or economic? Explain. How do you account for any convergence or divergence? Which approach would you argue is more supported constitutionally? Explain.

 

7. Select a public policy issue affecting Californians today. The issue can be state, county or municipal. Provide detail on the nature of the problem. Discuss how that problem is being addressed. Is there a greater reliance on the public or private sector? Do you agree with that reliance? Explain. Is that approach supported by the US Constitution, in your view? Is that approach supported by American values? If the constitutional and ethical support is equivalent, explain why? If there is a difference, explain.

 

8. Identify a chief executive of government in this country at any level, federal, state or local. Does that individual’s policy positions lead more in the direction of a public or private sector emphasis? Support your view citing that person’s position on a public policy issue and a policy alternative that would reflect the opposite view. Which position do you support? Explain, providing a constitutional justification in addition to any moral/ethical views.