Bureaucrats put government policy into practice, and therefore the federal
bureaucracy has a large impact on policymaking. In order to get their policies
passed, the president and Congress must work with the bureaucracy. Controlling the
bureaucracy can be difficult for the following reasons:
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Size: The president cannot monitor everyone or even every
group within the bureaucracy, so much of what bureaucrats do goes unmonitored.
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Expertise of bureaucrats: The people who administer policy
often know much more about those issues than the president or members of
Congress. This expertise gives the bureaucrats power.
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Civil service laws: Firing bureaucrats, even for
incompetence, is very difficult.
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Clientele groups: Many federal agencies provide services to
thousands of people, and those people sometimes rally to defend the agency.
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Policy implementation: When Congress creates a new program,
it does not establish all the details on how the policy will be implemented.
Instead, Congress passes enabling legislation, which grants power
to an agency to work out the specifics. Although the agency must stay within
some bounds, it has a great deal of latitude in determining how to carry out the
wishes of Congress.
Rule-making
The federal bureaucracy makes rules that affect how programs operate, and
these rules must be obeyed, just as if they were laws. The
rule-making process for government agencies occurs in stages.
After Congress passes new regulatory laws, the agency charged with implementing
the law proposes a series of rules, which are published in the Federal
Register. Interested parties can comment on the rules, either at
public hearings or by submitting documents to the agency. After the agency
publishes the final regulations, it must wait sixty days before enforcing those
rules. During that time, Congress can review and change the rules if it desires.
If Congress makes no changes, the rules go into effect at the end of sixty
days.
Federal regulations affect many groups of people, who have often
challenged those regulations in court. Because litigation is a slow and
expensive way to change regulations, Congress passed the Negotiated Rulemaking
Act of 1990 to limit the need for litigation by opening the rulemaking process
to those affected by it. The act encouraged federal agencies to engage in
negotiated rule-making. If an agency agrees to the proposed
regulations, for example, it publishes the proposals in the Federal
Register and then participates in a negotiating committee overseen
by a third party. Agreements reached by the committee are then open to the
normal public review process. Parties to negotiated rule-making agree not to sue
over the rules.
