Cabinet Departments Research Articles

Diabetes in the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A core mission of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Epidemiologic Research and Information Centers (ERICs) is to contribute to knowledge on the frequency and causes of health conditions and their outcomes in U.S. veterans. The Seattle ERIC selected the growing burden of diabetes in veterans as a priority area and with our colleagues prepared this supplement. Our goals are 1 ) to provide an overview of VA services, benefits, and diabetes advances to the diabetes community and 2 ) to describe research findings based on our veterans with diabetes. The VA is the second largest of the 15 U.S. cabinet departments and operates nationwide programs for health care, financial assistance, and burial benefits. VA 2003 budget projections included $32.8 billion for benefits, $25.9 billion for health care, and $909 million for all VA construction, administration, and cemetery operations (1). Veterans have a distinct sociodemographic profile that reflects their entry into military service in times of peace and conflict. Among those discharged from military service (veterans), the priority for VA health care goes first to those with service-connected disabilities and then to others based on income and medical need. VA financial benefits are provided to 3.3 million people. About 2.7 …

Outcome-focused Management in the United States

The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA, the Results Act) established a performance management framework for federal departments and agencies. The framework consists of agency Strategic Plans, Annual Performance Plans and Annual Performance Reports. Additionally, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) annually prepares a Government-wide Performance Plan. Approximately 100 Cabinet departments, independent agencies and government corporations prepare these plans and reports. These departments and agencies comprise nearly the entire Executive branch of government. (The Central Intelligence Agency is statutorily exempted, and OMB has exempted about 15 very small agencies from having to comply with GPRA requirements.)

A Brief History of the U.S. Department of Education, 1979–2002

From a small program once shunned by the White House and attacked as an unnecessary intrusion into the workings of the nation's education systems, the Department of has grown into a major policy force in primary, secondary, and higher education. Mr. Stallings traces that evolution. THE RESPONSIBILITY for the education of American children has enjoyed at least a small presence at the federal level since the middle of the 19th century, usually in the form of independent programs housed in separate Cabinet-level departments. Various incarnations of a national education office or bureau -- beginning with the first federal office, established in 1838 for gathering statistics -- took root slowly. Despite concerns about an overt federalization of education, locating all the disparate programs into a single, separate office and giving it departmental status became the rallying cry of a small but growing minority from as early as the Reconstruction period. The idea gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s as the federal budget for education eclipsed the budgets of other full-fledged departments. By the 1970s, an independent, Cabinet-level department was on the verge of realization. Establishing a Federal Department In the period between 1908 and 1975, more than 130 bills to form a department of education were introduced.1 But it took two events to make the dream a reality: the election to the Senate of Abraham Ribicoff, a former secretary of health, education, and welfare (HEW), and the rapid politicization of the National Association (NEA). Sen. Ribicoff began work in earnest on the formation of a department in the 1960s. In 1972 the NEA formed a political action committee and in 1975 joined forces with other unions to form the Labor Coalition Clearinghouse (LCC) for election campaigning. Along with other members of the LCC, the NEA released Needed: A Cabinet Department of Education in 1975,2 but its most significant step was to endorse Jimmy Carter for President in the election of 1976. The NEA was no small player in the nomination process, and some estimates suggest that the larger LCC influenced the selection of more than 400 of the 3,000 delegates who attended the Democratic National Convention in 1976.3 NEA support helped to put Carter in the White House in 1976, but, once he was there, it was unclear whether his Administration would follow through on promises to consider Cabinet-level status for education. was not a top policy priority for the Carter team, and forming a new department ran counter to his platform of streamlining the federal government. After much deliberation and study, however, Carter finally made good on his campaign promise and endorsed Cabinet- level status for education.4 Sen. Ribicoff was quick to support the President's decision, and in March he co-sponsored yet another bill, the Department of Organization Act. The debates in the Senate Governmental Operations Committee in the winter of 1977-78 were at times acrimonious, but the bill was ultimately released to the floor, where the measure passed.5 The bill did not come up for a vote in the House during the same session, and the proceedings began all over again the following year. At last, the bill passed the House in a close vote. President Carter signed it into law on 17 October 1979, finally ending a struggle of almost 150 years. Building and Preserving the Department The Honorable Shirley Hufstedler, chosen by President Carter to be the first secretary of education, had by law only six months to get the department up and running. She worked quickly to establish the department's agenda, combining her own goals with a panoply of suggestions from critics and supporters alike. One set of goals focused on streamlining and strengthening the political workings of the federal/state relationship; a second set reinforced the notion that the department would not supersede local control by attempting to impose restrictive regulations; a third set focused on issues of educational equity. …

Erratum: A Formal Model of the Politics of Delegation in a Separation of Powers System

in Political scientists have long been interested in conditions under which politicians delegate policy decisions to bureaucratic agencies (Wilson 1887; Landis 1938; Freedman 1981; Ara son, Gellhorn, and Robinson 1982; Fiorina 1982, 1986; McCubbins, Noll, and Weingast 1987, 1989; Moe 1989; Calvert, McCubbins, and Weingast 1989). With a recent focus on divided and unified government, scholars have claimed that bu? reaucratic discretion will be greater when the legislative and executive branches are closely aligned (Epstein and O'Halloran 1994,1996,1999). In these models, given uncertainty over policy and executive over the agency, the legislature is only willing to delegate decisions to the agency when the executive's preferences are similar to those of the legislature, as under unified government.1 While these results seem intuitive, recent empirical analyses of delegation decisions paint a more complex picture. Epstein and O'Halloran, who initially formalized these results, examine the level of discretion in congres? sional legislation in the postwar years. They do, indeed, find support for greater discretion to executive-controlled agencies under unified govern? ment. However, they also find greater discretion to independent agencies under divided government. The first two categories, [Executive Office of the President] and cabinet departments, are used relatively more often un? der unified government, while independent agencies and commissions are used more often under divided control (Epstein and O'Halloran 1999, 154-155). This result is not predicted by present models of delegation, which do not differentiate among agency types. Current empirical work has also focused on the state level to assess whether there is a link between discretion and unified government. For ex? ample, Huber, Shipan, and Pfahler (2001) explore whether state governments restricted Medicaid bureaucrats more substantially under divided

Homeland Security and Intelligence: Can Oil Mix with Water in an Open Society?

The newest US Cabinet department is Homeland Security (DHS). One of the most controversial aspects in the process of developing this entity is the role of intelligence in providing information on the increasing terrorist threat. This article examines the intelligence challenges for homeland security. In doing so, it explores the problems of merging disparate cultures – law enforcement vs intelligence, civil entities vs military, federal vs state and local jurisdictions, and domestic focus vs international perspective. Given the nature of the globalized, asymmetric threat, the need for more and better intelligence sharing is obvious. Terrorists and other criminals do not respect international boundaries; in fact, they exploit them in an effort to prevent effective and timely countermeasures. This demands that robust multinational collaboration and interagency coordination be practiced.

Presidents, the presidency, and the political environment

The opening chapter introduces this book's approach as well as the institutional development of the presidency and its organizational structure. Chapters 2 through 6 provide an extended discussion of the institutional presidency, first examining the working relationships of the White House with Congress and with the media, and then looking at policy-making in differing policy areas. In each of these five chapters, Kessel introduces the actors on the White House staff or in cabinet departments or agencies. He then considers their activities, looking at those common throughout the institutional presidency - those specific to the task, such as negotiation in foreign policy, coping with business cycles in economics, and handling projects and patronage in dealing with Congress. In the final two chapters, Kessel asks what presidents have been able to accomplish. In Chapter 7, he evaluates, for each contemporary president, examples of policy success, failure, and mixed results. He broadens the analysis in his concluding chapter to examine larger patterns of presidential accomplishment. His conclusion: all presidents have mixed records, but in the aggregate, presidents succeed more often than they fail by a factor of 3 to 2.

Editorial: President Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: Boon or Boondoggle?

On 29 January 2001, nine days after his inauguration as the 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush issued a proposal to provide government money for churches and other houses of worship that offer social services for Americans need. The president stated, When we see social needs America, my administration will look first to faith-based programs and community groups, which have proven their power to save and change lives. The president drew a line be tween what the initiative will support and what it will not. He said, 'We will not fund the religious activities of any group, but when people of faith provide social services we will not discriminate against them. As to his administration's commitment to the initiative the president confidently declared, It's going to be one of the most important initia tives that my administration not only discusses, but also implements. Subsequently, President Bush issued executive orders to establish the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to coordinate the program and appointed Professor J.D. Dilulio, Jr., political science pro fessor at the University of Pennsylvania, as the executive director of the Initiative. The next day, Bush charged the Congress to pave the way for faith-based organizations to with secular agencies for gov ernment dollars. The president signed another executive order com mitting five cabinet departments—justice, housing and urban development, health and human services, labor, and education—to in vestigate ways to make it easier for faith-based groups to compete for government contracts. The president's plan earmarks between $8 bil lion and $10 billion to be spent on faith-based initiatives during his first year office. Due to constitutional restrictions on government funding of relig ious institutions the United States, Bush's plan is a bold challenge to the principle of church-state separation. Churches and other faith based organizations the United States are often prohibited from re ceiving direct government grants, not because the government chooses to discriminate against religion, but because the courts have usually

Department of Trade & Industry, DTI (A United Kingdom Cabinet Department)

Department of Trade & Industry, DTI (A United Kingdom Cabinet Department)

The Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period, 1789-1801

This is an examination of the US constitution, providing an analysis from a legal perspective of the first six congresses constituting the federalist period. The book aims to establish that the Constitution was forged, not in the courts, but in the legislative and executive branches of government. The first half of the book is devoted to the work of the First Congress, which was virtually a continuation of the Constitutional Convention, setting up the executive cabinet departments, the judiciary, a taxation system, and a host of other institutions. The second part of the book examines the Second to the Sixth Congresses, where partisan battles arose over such controversial initiatives as the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Employee Involvement in Seattle: Reengineering Government in a City Lacking a Financial Crisis

Without fiscal pressure, but with a clamor for re-engineering and service reform reverberating, the usually progressive Seattle began an improved labor-management relations effort through a series of project teams sponsored by departmental joint-labor management committees. The aim was to save costs and improve service. Unlike the other examples in this issue, Seattle didn't start with bargaining improvement or conflict resolution in mind, nor did it begin with a large and visible project like health care or a civic arena. Seattle started with a simple but ambitious plan, sponsored by labor and management, to create the capacity to set up well-structured ad hoc joint teams to attack potential savings and improvements under the umbrella of joint committees in each department. Cost savings and improvements came from such diverse services as the electric utility, the parks department, fleet maintenance, the municipal court and animal control. The resulting Employee Involvement Committees can discuss any issue, other than wage and benefits, that relates to services improvement. A citywide oversight committee helps to share lessons and to help put issues relevant to bargaining into play in the proper forum. With the help of a U.S. Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) grant, Seattle and the coalition of unions jointly built training and administrative capacity to ensure success. The grant and the city support expanded the number of management and union leaders involved with constructive problem solving. Over two dozen involvement committees were launched and made progress within a year, and many departmental joint committees were started or revitalized. The results of the EICs and related arrangements led to and created enthusiasm for expansive changes in the labor-management relationship. These innovative arrangements were also expected to affect the bargaining climate and a broader range of workplace, service and cost items. In a dramatic broadening of these early efforts, the city formed a city-level Labor Management Leadership Committee with key representatives from the city council, the mayor's office and cabinet department. The Seattle example, partly an alternative to managed competition, shows the possibilities in starting small, building capacity, focusing on service through joint efforts, and seeing the expanded trust moving to other aspects of the relationship and creating greater opportunities for improvement. This jointly authored perspective brings insight to understanding how the EICs became a successful event and an effective catalyst for broader change.

The problems of independent agencies in the United States and the European Union

The word independent in the United States (US) context is most properly used in connection with the independent regulatory commissions. Those commissions are not independent of Congressional control. Both the commissions and the agencies of the regular cabinet departments live in a regime of statutory duties under which Congressional statutes not presidential policies control much of their behavior. Both are subject to judicial review. Commissions basically are independent in the sense that they are usually not subject to the complete control by commissioners of one political party. They are somewhat independent of the President in that no single President has appointed all the commissioners of a particular commission and commissioners may only be dismissed by the President for cause. American experience suggests that European Union (EU) independent agencies will create severe problems of co-ordination, legitimacy and control. These problems are not alleviated by the claim that EU agencies will have purely informational roles because information is a key element in policy-making and policy controversy.

1996 Budget finally passed; NASA delivers bad news

Seven months, 13 continuing resolutions, and several furloughs into the 1996 fiscal year, the U.S. government and its besieged science agencies now have a budget. On April 25, H.R. 3019, the omnibus spending appropriation for the rest of fiscal 1996 was passed by Congress and, on April 26, President Clinton signed the $163 billion spending bill into law, providing funds for nine cabinet departments and 38 federal agencies through September 30, 1996.

Congress, White House reach 1996 budget deal

Seven months into the fiscal year, the White House and Congress finally struck a deal in the waning hours of April 24 on a fiscal 1996 federal budget for the nine Cabinet departments and several dozen agencies that had been operating under a series of continuing resolutions. Both sides apparently got at least some of what they wanted. Congressional Republicans could point to an overall spending level some $23 billion lower than the previous year's—a down payment on balancing the federal budget. President Clinton got funding restored for some of his priority programs, including the Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program (ATP). And a number of what he considered antienvironmental riders were dropped from the final omnibus appropriations bill (H.R. 3019), which he was expected to sign as soon as it reached his desk. Details of the agreement—including budget numbers—were not yet available at press time. But it appeared that research funding agencies fared better ...

Independent Task Force Urges New R&D Goals For Department of Energy

The Department of Energy, probably the unwieldiest of all the Cabinet departments, has been given yet another road map for its energy research and development program. Numerous past studies have examined various aspects of the department's R&D programs. A new report, the first to take a truly comprehensive look at them, is called R&D: Shaping Our Nation's Future in a Competitive World. It was produced by a task force chaired by one of the foremost experts on energy policy, Daniel Yergin, president of Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Cambridge, Mass. The task force was cochaired by Maxine Savitz, general manager of AlliedSignal Ceramic Components, and Mason Willrich, a former law professor and industrial manager who is now a private energy consultant. The 13 other panel members come from various energy-related companies and university departments. The report comes at a time of immense ferment for a department whose current mission bears little resemblance to ...

GOP BUDGET CUTTING PLANS

Congressional Republicans have made good on their promise to produce a plan to balance the federal budget by 2002. The House plan goes much further than the Senate's in terms of wholesale rearrangement of government. But the effect of both on the chemical community is summed up in six words by one GOP leader: protect fundamental science and end corporate welfare. The House Budget Committee's plan calls for elimination of three Cabinet departments—Commerce, Education, and Energy. The Senate Budget Committee's proposal would eliminate only Commerce. But the department's activities wouldn't really be eliminated by either plan. Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown says plans to do away with his department are ludicrous and don't make sense. He points out that nearly two-thirds of Commerce's functions would be preserved under both plans, including the Patent & Trademark Office, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. The programs to be eliminated, he notes, ...

The 1992 Regulatory Moratorium: Did It Make a Difference?

History of Presidential Involvement in Rulemaking Since the Roosevelt administration and the recommendations of the Brownlow Commission, presidents have attempted to assert more control over regulatory agencies. Although in the past the appointment power was a mechanism used by presidents to oversee agencies, it has not provided an adequate amount of control over many agency actions. Bureaucratic advantages such as knowledge, history, and seniority put the chief executive at a disadvantage vis-a-vis the large executive branch. Moe (1985a) states that presidents began to combat this by strengthening the institutional presidency, which consists of the White House, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and other executive offices (e.g., Council of Economic Advisors). Recent research posits that the president can rely more on the loyalty of these inner parts of the executive branch than the individual cabinet level agencies. Moves by the Reagan administration to politicize the bureaucracy by placing loyal soldiers in many positions was another mechanism to assert control (Moe, 1985a). Many of these mechanisms were an attempt to control the bureaucracy. The issuing of regulations may be the most important function of many agencies because these regulations constitute the setting of policy and the development of law. During the 1970s, presidents imposed procedural constraints on rulemaking, such as requiring inflation-impact statements and environmental-impact statements, to facilitate closer review of regulation development by the White House. The Carter administration first formalized presidential regulatory review with Executive Order 12044. Executive Order 12044 dealt with general policy goals and criteria, the agencies' internal regulatory procedures, regulatory analysis (specifically for major regulations with an impact of over $100 million), and the review of existing regulations. The Regulatory Analysis Review Group (RARG), made up of representatives of OMB, the Council of Economic Advisors, several cabinet departments, and other White House offices, had the responsibility for implementing this order and coordinating interagency review. Executive Order 12044 met with some success in getting agencies to conduct more detailed analysis of regulatory actions (Tolchin and Tolchin, 1983). But, this order was only the beginning of the more active assault on regulations that occurred during the Reagan administration. Presidential involvement in regulation came to the forefront of policy making during the Reagan administration (Duffy, 1993). One of President Reagan's first acts as president was the issuance of Executive Order 12291. This order did a number of things including suspending or postponing a large number of regulations issued by agencies at the end of the Carter administration, requiring agencies to publish semi-annual regulatory agendas of those actions they expected to publish, setting up the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief to be chaired by Vice President Bush (an early precursor to the Competitiveness Council), and establishing a routine mechanism for OMB review of agency regulations. In addition, control of regulatory review was placed in the newly created Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within OMB. This office was created by the promulgation of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, enacted during the end of the Carter administration. This move by the Reagan administration basically developed a central clearinghouse for agency regulations (Benda and Levine, 1985). Probably the most important component of Executive Order 12291 was the requirement that agencies complete Regulatory Impact Analyses (RIAs) for all major regulations. The RIA had to apply cost-benefit analysis requiring the benefits of a regulation to outweigh its costs. OMB had enormous discretion in terms of these requirements and could waive them if desired. This would most likely occur if the action reduced regulatory burden. …

More groups push for cuts in federal R&D

Two more groups—the Heritage Foundation and Citizens Against Government Waste—have weighed in with plans to cut the federal government. The foundation, a conservative-oriented Washington, D.C, think tank, has issued a radical proposal calling for, among other things, cutting the number of Cabinet departments from 14 to five: Defense, Health & Human Services, Justice, Treasury, and State. Agriculture would be downgraded to independent agency status. So would Interior—which would join the Environmental Protection Agency in a new Bureau of Natural Resources. Under Heritage's plan, slimming the federal government means slimming federal research. For example, in the process of transforming USDA into a Bureau of Agriculture, overall funding for a merged Agricultural Research Service and a Cooperative State Research, Education & Extension Service would drop 50% to $800 million. Neither the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) nor the Technology Administration would survive elimination of the Comme...

Energy Department Shuffle Probably Will Expel Some Research

The Republican plan to create a smaller, more effective government includes various schemes to reshape the executive branch. Many members of Congress call for the breakup or possible elimination of several Cabinet departments. At the head of the list is the Department of Energy, a creation of the Carter Administration that has long had trouble justifying itself. Several congressional subcommittees already have begun questioning the value of all or part of DOE, and the Clinton Administration has not put much effort into defending the department. Although not actually calling for elimination of DOE, the Administration is proposing a large budget reduction for the department. Over the next five years, the Administration says it will cut more than $10 billion from DOE spending, based on a projected budget that would have been about $18 billion annually. Ironically, the proposed fiscal 1996 budget for DOE is $17.8 billion, which is actually slightly more ...

Subordination or Independence for Administrators? The Decision of 1789 Reexamined

ing the constitutive position helped shape the outcome as well as the ongoing debate over the constitutional status of thefederal bureaucracy. What is the proper role for administrative power in the American constitutional system? This question was certainly a central concern in the writings of Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow. Louis Brownlow, Luther Gulick, and Charles Merriam fashioned an expansive answer as part of the foundation for the New Deal, and, 30 years later, Theodore Lowi (1969) rebuked what they had wrought. Recently, the Constitution's bicentennial stimulated an outpouring of historical research and normative argument attempting to demonstrate the compatibility of the modem administrative state with American constitutional principles (Freedman, 1978; Rohr, 1986; Public Administration Review, 1987; Wamsley, et al. 1990). After more than a century of commentary and scholarship on the subject, it is surprising to find only a handful of in-depth analyses of the seminal event in the establishment of public administration under the Constitution: the debate in the U.S. House of Representatives in May and June of 1789 concerning the organization of the first cabinet departments and the power of the president to dismiss executive officers.

Taiwan Readies for High-Tech Era, Buoyed by Government Support

Industrial chemistry in Taiwan is closely controlled by government policies, particularly those affecting research and development. Those policies have had a demonstrable success over the past decade. Now, however, as Taiwan faces the high-tech era, a new sense of urgency is emerging. Much of Taiwan's future success in high technology will depend on the efforts of the Research, Development & Evaluation Commission (RDEC) of the Executive Yuan (the Executive Yuan is a kind of cabinet department roughly equivalent to one of the Presidential Cabinet departments in the U.S.) and those of the National Science Council. Longrange effort in R&D rests with the universities and the National Academia Sinica. Science and technology in Taiwan are well represented at the highest levels of government planning. Jenn-Tai Hwang, vice chairman of RDEC and former head of the Chinese Chemical Society, explains that as a result of a governmental reorganization in 1987, RDEC has a status equivalent to other ...