Understanding US Domestic Policy

Introduction to Domestic Policy

• On March 25, 2010, Congress passed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA).
• HCERA expanded and improved elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.
• HCERA is an example of public policymaking regardless of people's views of whether it helps the American people.
• Public policy considers all the component parts of the US political system
• Public policy seeks to answer, how do different areas of policy differ? What roles do policy analysts and advocates play? What programs does the national government currently provide? And how do budgetary policy and politics operate?

Public Policy Concept

• Public policy involves the concept and examples when put into action.
• The design of any complicated product must consider the needs of regulators, transporters, assembly line workers, parts suppliers, and other participants in the manufacture and shipment process.
• Domestic policy needs to ensure that citizens have access to an array of goods and services, with multiple parties involved.

Public Policy Definition

• It is the broad strategy a government uses to do its job
• It is a stable set of governmental actions addressing societal concerns.
• Public policy guides legislative action for extended periods, not just short-term fixes.
• Policy development involves significant debate, compromise, and refinement over years.
• Policy outcomes need input from various government institutions, interest groups, and the public.
• The expansion of health care access evolved over decades with analysis, reflection, and state-level program trials.
• In the US, more than 50% of healthcare spending previously came from federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid before ACA and HCERA.
• Public policy addresses concerns of a large segment of society, not just individuals or small groups.
• Public policy encompasses government actions and their resulting behaviors/outcomes.
• Policy can arise from government inaction when public opinion shifts.
• Congress' inaction on gun safety despite public support for changes exemplifies this.
• The last major change to gun policy occurred in 2004 with the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994).

Public Policy as Outcomes

• Policy is how elected officials want to help their constituents
• Policy as the formal expression of what elected or appointed officials are trying to achieve
• Congress declared its policy through the HCERA (2010), which directed how it would appropriate money
• The president can implement or change policy through an executive order
• Policy changes from court actions such as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which ended school segregation
• Elected officials consult the government bureaucracy for expertise in policy creation/implementation.
• Congress passed the Clean Water Act (1972), tasking the EPA with determining water cleanliness standards.
• Public policy promotes certain behaviors while discouraging others, creating winners and losers.
• Individuals/corporations favored by a policy benefit while others lose.
• Policies can have unintended consequences through higher taxes, declining trade school enrollment, competitive disadvantages and shifting tax burdens.
• Voter reactions to policies depend on whether they perceive benefits or harm.

The US Social Safety Net

• During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the US created a set of policies and programs that constituted a social safety net for those who had lost their jobs, their homes, and their savings
• Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the federal government began programs like the Work Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps to combat unemployment
• The Home Owners' Loan Corporation was introduced to refinance Depression-related mortgage debts
• As the effects of the Depression eased, the government phased out many of these programs
• Other programs, like Social Security or the minimum wage, remain an important part of the way the government takes care of the vulnerable members of its population.
• The federal government has also added further social support programs, like Medicaid, Medicare, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, to ensure a baseline or minimal standard of living for all, even in the direst of times.
• Criticism that some safety net programs incentivize welfare dependence and are inefficient
• Some criticize "government leeches" who use food stamps inappropriately.
• Critics resent taxpayer money used to relieve social problems
• Some workers who struggle to get by without government support feel that welfare families should do the same
• Where to draw the line between government support and individual responsibility
• Welfare fraud has happened
• Welfare reforms of the 1990s have made long-term dependence on the federal government less likely as the welfare safety net was pushed to the states
• The income gap between the richest and the poorest at its highest level in history makes this topic is likely to continue to receive much discussion in the coming years.

Categorizing Public Policy

• Public policy is politically contentious, influenced by differences between liberals and conservatives.
• Contemporary liberals are comfortable with government-led social and economic reforms for equitable outcomes.
• Conservatives often view government involvement as intrusive, favoring private-sector solutions.

Categories of Goods

• Satisfying people requires meeting physical, psychological, and social needs
• Food, water, and shelter are basic needs
• Subsistence societies meet needs through personal farming, well digging, and shelter creation

Public vs Private Goods

• Goods include commodities, services, and systems satisfying wants/needs. Private goods are owned, exclude others via price, and are finite Traders own the goods, and they are tradable
• Private goods proponents believe market forces operate most effectively without intervention of the government in pricing
• Marketplace exchange is most efficient for privatized goods
• Currency facilitates trade without needing direct barter
• Competition among sellers and buyers drives fair pricing
• Free-market economics sees no need for government to protect private goods' value.
• Industries self-regulate to protect their value
• Self-monitoring of private goods makes public policy regulation unnecessary.

Public and Toll Goods

• Libertarians want minimal government action as they believe the private sector operates more efficiently.
• Increased benefits from private goods led to recognizing problems with exclusive private ownership.
• Some goods cannot be strictly private
• National security: provided by armed forces so reasonably reserved for few
• Public goods are non-excludable and infinite like Air.
• Common goods are non-excludable but finite like forests, water, and fisheries.
• The "tragedy of the commons" occurs when unregulated individuals deplete a common resource of financial value.
• Toll goods are open to all but paid for, including Goods like cable TV, cellphone service, and private schools
• Toll roads were originally private companies charging tolls.
• As public lands became private, mass production led to monopolies, support grew for regulating private entities and the government taking over toll goods, and the Great Depression led to the development and protecting public goods

Classic Types of Policy

• Public policy determines how to distribute public goods, common goods and toll goods
• Policymakers consider who pays and who benefits
• Costs and benefits go to participants for private transactions
• Policies may be categorized based on concentrated vs. diffused costs and benefits like Distributive Policy and Distributive policy
• Distributive policy collects payments/resources to give limited, direct benefits like highways or education
• The Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s was a distributive policy example between the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads
• The Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads allowed land grants, distribution of publicly owned land to private citizens, and the construction of a nationwide transportation network
• Agriculture operates similarly through price supports and crop insurance to help farmers

The Hoover Dam

• As Westward expansion needed a way to control the floods and droughts that made agriculture too difficult in the region
• 1922: the reclamation service chose Black Canyon as a good diversion to divert the river
• Because it would affect seven states, the federal government took the lead on the project
• $49 million and one hundred lives was the cost of building The Hoover Dam
• The Hoover Dam was completed in 1935 to generate hydroelectric power and irrigate two million acres of land

Federal Incentives

• Distributive policy supports citizens' efforts to achieve financial investment in the country's future
• Ensure citizen investment through affordable home ownership and education such as Pell grants, tax credits/deductions, and subsidized loans

Regulatory Policy

• Regulatory policy: diffuse costs and concentrated benefits
• Policies designed to protect public health and safety, and the environment, and effective for controlling or protecting public or common resources
• Regulatory policies prevent manufacturers from polluting, selling harmful products or compromising employee health
• Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" (1906) exposed unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry, prompting the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was made in reaction to the unsafe meatpacking industry
• There are other regulatory policies designed to improve financial market transparency/ prevent monopolies, due to the nation's experiences during the depression of 1896 and the Great Depression of the 1930s

Redistributive Policy

• Redistributive policy redistributes resources in society from one group to another such as the middle class and the poor paying for low income
• Examples: Head Start, Medicaid, TANF, SNAP
• They incentivize specific behaviors like Pell grants and tax credits

Key Domestic Areas

• Public policy includes specific programs and regulations that attempt to fund the US government to protect its citizens

Three Major Domestic Policy Areas

1. Social Welfare
2. Science, technology, and education
3. Business stimulus and regulation

• Goals or sector of society can broadly categorize most policies, although food stamps may serve multiple purposes
• Implementing the policies costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year

Social Welfare Policy

• US government began developing social welfare policy during the Great Depression in 1930s
• 1960s became a major function of the federal government and developed to serve overlaps
• Social welfare policy is designed to ensure level of equity in a market economics.
• During the Great Depression, politicians feared high unemployment could threaten the stability of democracy like in European countries/Germany and Italy
• Democratic systems work best when poverty is minimized.
• Social welfare policy creates automatic stimulus by building a safety net that can catch suffering members of society.
• Prevents economic recession from sliding into damage depression or individual families that cause them from starving an entire economy
• One of the oldest and largest pieces of social welfare policy is Social Security, costing the United States about $845 billion in 2014 alone
• Taxes of 12.4% offset the cost with employees and employers splitting the bill
• Conceived as solution to several problems inherent to the Industrial Era economy such as workers earning living through manual labor and most American women staying home
• Social security aims to solve a number of key problems

Social Security Key Concerns

1 Retirement benefit: - After minimum years of work, American workers claim benefit when reaching retirement - Entitlement program benefits particular group, and most qualify for plan - Amount depends on his or her lifetime earnings - Age 65 retirement; changes legislation increased to age 67 after the 1959’s - May be claimed by supervisors of qualifying workers like spouses and/or children even if they do not have a wage income

2 Benefits of disability payments: - Government distributes to workers that are unable to work due to injuries - Workers demonstrate that the injury is at least 12 months 3 Supplemental Security Income: - Provides income to adults or children that are disabled or to the elderly who fall below the income threshold

• During the Bush administration (George W.), Social Securities main goal was to prevent predicted of impending collapse
• 1950 to 2013 of workers paying into benefits receiving payments dropped to 2.8 to 1
• Due to continue graphic and slower population, but 2033 generated revenue that is generated to be insufficient
• Privatizing the program and variable benefits were Bush’s attempts
• Effort ultimately failed, and Social Security long term viability is uncertain

Social Security Numerous Plan Saving

• Including raising retirement age, income taxes, (specifically for wealthy with $118,500 cap removing, and reducing pay for wealthier retirees)

Health Care

• Designed to provide cash payments/ sustain the aged and disabled Medicare and Medicaid ensure that population have access to healthcare

Medicare

• Like Social Security, is an entitlement program of which funded is from payroll taxes
• purpose is to confirm senior citizens and/or retirees have low cost healthcare without having a job
• Has 3 coverages: hospitalization insurance, cost for health expenses (fee- based supplemental coverage), prescription drug benefit Medicare and like Social Security long-term challenges due to same demographic
• Also faces the problem with health care costing more than inflation

Medicaid

• Health insurance program based formula so beneficiaries demonstrate that they need a particular income
• They have receive fair comprehensive set of healthcare and may be limited/payed for depending on their acceptance
• Many have reduced access to income by setting the threshold
• ACA (2010), provided a money but the stated have reduced
• Help with overall causes with leaving certain people without government
• 2014 made up by the government Medicare
• Most are based on certain maximum income requirements to order
• TANF’s and SNAP unemployment insurance; a few examples
• 480 Billion for other programs than Medicare

Science Technology and Education

• Realized to address 2 problems and secure the future after WWII ended
• Needed ten million to workers’ be reintegrated and lacked work skills
• Soviet Union on how success can depend new conflict
• Government and needed education workers pieces of legislation needed
• The government spent more on military and industry

Military Education

• NASA, foundations, the national institute helps promote the research civilian in a range of projects
• In NASA focuses by giving and to find the government’s work is done and better suited
• Space companies launched

Educational Funding

• In American Funding there is a need for students for the government fund is to the existing provide system.

Business Stimulus and Regulation

• Aspect to domestic policy is regulation to business
• Depending voters on their the jobs depends on business
• Unfair and damaging in government industry

Government Aid

• Energy and agricultural are to largest
• Rural is influential
• Voters are affected every time they go

Government Regulation

• Worker safety from is EPA, and the FDA.

Policy Advocates

• Consist of 2 topics: 1 policy advocate 2 advocacy anal

Policy Analysts

• Policy analysts is change society and raise state to get a hold
• May contribute as political campaign
• Think tanks promote their agenda

The ARRP

• AARP often involves the regulatory distributive politics
• Lower costs and payment is what they often seek

Policy Analysts

• Aim to identify is potential choices for the public
• Don’t fully encourage is there potential results
• The CB0 is part of what balances

Congressional Legislation

• Is the law in all parts of regulation is the people input in government
• OMB’s are too regulatory and often affect industry objectivity

Policy Process

• The 14 staged agenda
• Problems and alternative and can make things better
• Health care is the reason to cover all people

The Air Quality Act

• Another problem and congress made things better

Federal Government

• Legislative is a way a policy to act
• Agencies implement what they do to act

Evaluate

• How well they do is what has to be sought for to make it back to normal 16:5

Budget and Tax Policy

1 Congress ensure priorities that are short in public

Three Economic Theories

1 Stimulate 2 Grow 3 Main that economy

Laissez- Faire

• Efficient market means most way
• Economy grows and private sector is what succeeds

Keynesianism

• Is how money is used and people have to buy goods to stimulate employment

Federal Budget

• For 2016 around 2.0 and or trillion by the US

Discretionary Spndings

• What can spent in to the economy
• Revenue is government should at least even out

Two Ways to Balance Budget

1 increase revenue 2 increase money