well hey there and welcome back to heimlich's history now we've been going through unit 2 of the ap government curriculum and more specifically we've started talking about the federal bureaucracy so in this video we're going to see exactly how the federal bureaucracy carries out the will of the executive branch so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked let's get to it so in this video here's what we're trying to do explain how the federal bureaucracy uses delegated discretionary authority for rulemaking and implementation okay a lot of big hairy words in there but let me just explain it up real nice for you first let me remind you what the federal bureaucracy is the federal bureaucracy is made up of the couple million people who work for all the agencies and departments that fall under the authority of the executive branch remember that the executive branch of the federal government is there to execute the laws congress passes the laws the supreme court interprets the laws but it's the job of the executive branch to make sure people like you and me are actually abiding by those laws now the figure head of the executive branch is of course the president and constitutionally it's the president who's responsible for executing the law but one president can possibly go everywhere in the nation to make sure that we're paying our taxes on time or keeping air pollution within the legal limits so if one guy can't do that how does the law get executed on the nose the bureaucracy does it and as i mentioned in the last video there are butt loads of bureaucratic departments and agencies whose job it is to make the finer more concrete rules and regulations to enforce the law if that doesn't make sense to you think about it like this suppose your parents decide to go out for a night and they leave you in charge of your little brother and before they leave they say your brother has to clean his room while we're gone and you are responsible for making sure that he does it and then they leave so you're left with a directive and the outcome is clear but the details are vague like does he need to clean his room first before he does anything else can he play video games first and then clean his room how clean does the room have to be in order to satisfy the parents requests and on and on all of those details are left up to you just as long as in the end the room is clean so you see your little brother down you tell him that mom and dad said he has to clean his room like you can play video games for 30 minutes then you have to pick up all your clothes vacuum the floor and make your bed and then you can do whatever you want that's essentially what the bureaucracy does so congress passes a law like the clean air act which says in pretty vague terms that businesses need to change the way they operate in order to keep the air clean from pollutants but the thing is the folks in congress aren't biologists they're not climatologists they're not whatever they don't know anything about the mechanics of pollution and how it's produced and what concrete strategies need to be implemented to clean up factory emissions but you know who does know that stuff the environmental protection agency which is a bureaucratic agency stuffed with environmental experts so the parents say don't pollute as much and they leave the epa to make the specific and concrete rules for how that is actually going to become a reality okay i've said a lot of words to describe to you the kind of power the bureaucracy has and the term for that is delegated discretionary authority the bureaucratic agencies really have no constitutional authority of their own so the power that they have is delegated to them to enforce the law and since these agencies are filled with experts in the given field they have discretion to decide exactly how and when to implement the law additionally the bureaucracy has rule-making authority which again means they're the ones who make the specific rules for how the law will be carried out so let me give you an example the 16th amendment which is ratified in 1913 establishes the income tax and here's how it reads the congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived without apportionment among the several states and without regard to any census or enumeration you know what that's pretty basic it just says people guts to pay taxes on their income okay how is that actually going to happen well that's where a bureaucratic agency called the internal revenue service steps in the irs is the one who makes all the rules for how taxes are going to be collected it's the irs who said that taxes are due april 15th it's the irs who decides how we pay those taxes can we pay in cash can we pay online can we pay with a stack of ham sandwiches equal to the value of our withholdings all of those are rules created by the irs in order to implement the very broad law that we must pay our income taxes just in case you were wondering you cannot in fact pay your taxes with a ham sandwich okay i hope all of that makes sense now the ap overlords don't just want you to know how bureaucratic departments and agencies and commissions work they also want you to know the following seven examples along with examples of their discretionary authority first is the department of homeland security which exists to protect americans from terrorism and to maintain control of our borders they have rules for example over which immigrants are admitted and which are not and which can seek asylum within the borders of the united states second is the department of transportation which manages all kinds of transportation like highway and air travel they have rules for example governing how many hours a flight attendant can work and how much rest they need before starting another shift third is the department of veteran affairs which exists to manage the general welfare of our nation's veterans they have rules about the creation of veterans hospitals and how they're staffed and they have rules about education and home loans going to veterans fourth is the department of education which manages states and their implementation of federal educational standards they make rules about among many other things how schools receive federal grants and what qualifications are necessary to receive them fifth is the environmental protection agency which exists to protect the environment and human health through environmental regulations the reason a nuclear power plant can't just dump all their nuclear waste into our rivers is because of the rules and regulations established by the epa sixth is the federal elections commission which administers and enforces campaign finance laws they have rules regarding how a person becomes an official political candidate and rules about how much money they can raise and from whom and what they can do with it etc and finally you need to know the securities and exchange commission which regulates the stock market and prevents fraud if you've ever heard of anyone getting in trouble because they sold a bunch of stocks one day and then the next day the company tanked which would be an example of insider trading then that means they broke one of the sec's rules against this kind of thing okay if you need more help getting an a in your class and a five on your exam then click right here in the review packet and if you were helped by this video and you want me to keep making them by all means subscribe and i shall oblige heimler out