hey there and welcome back to heimlich history we've been going through unit two of the ap government curriculum and that means in this video it's time to talk about how the federal bureaucracy is held accountable by the other three branches of the federal government so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked with congressional oversight let's get to it so in this video here's what we're trying to do explain how congress uses its oversight power and its relationship with the executive branch and explain how the president ensures that the executive branch agencies and departments carry out their responsibilities in concert with the goals of the administration so if you've been watching the previous videos on the power and responsibilities of the federal bureaucracy you will no doubt know that the bureaucracy has a great deal of power over how laws are implemented and how they are executed they do this through their delegated discretionary authority and their rule making procedures and if you want to know more about that then see the previous video on unit 2 topic 13. so with all this authority to make rules that have the force of law how do the other branches keep this unwieldy bureaucratic beast in check well the vast majority of the checking comes from congress and the president although the supreme court joins the fund now and then too and i reckon we ought to look at each of them in turn so congress is concerned that the bureaucratic agencies actually implement the laws as congress intended when they passed the law and so in order to exercise this oversight there are two ways for congress to check the bureaucracy first is by the use of committee hearings congress has many committees that correspond to different government agencies and will call directors of those agencies to testify and give reports on their progress in carrying out the law sometimes these are just friendly check-ins and other times it gets a little crazy for example as i record this video there's a judiciary committee hearing involving the fbi with reference to an abuse scandal among olympic gymnasts several gymnasts reported their abuse to fbi agents and the fbi waited for over a year to do anything about it and in the period of their inaction many dozens more gymnasts were being abused and so the judiciary committee is hearing testimony from the gymnast and is going to take the fbi to task because they so horribly bungled the implementation of the law but congress can also check the bureaucracy by the power of the purse recall from earlier in this unit that the power of the purse means that congress is responsible for funding these bureaucratic agencies and an agency cannot spend any taxpayer money until they receive authorization of spending measures from congress remember congress is the entity responsible for the federal budget and so when the time comes around to fund certain agencies if those agencies aren't executing the law the way congress thinks is appropriate they can decrease the funding available to those agencies this is especially true after the passage of the budget and empowerment control act of 1974 which gave congress a lot more power over budgetary decisions at the expense of the president's power okay that's how congress can check the bureaucracy and now let's have a look at how the president can do it now remember that the bureaucracy officially falls under the authority of the president and so there are many different means by which the president can make sure the bureaucracy is functioning well the president of course has a policy agenda to implement and if the bureaucracy isn't cooperating with that agenda the president can use both formal and informal powers to shake things up among the president's formal powers is appointment if the bureaucracy isn't behaving like the president would like then the president can appoint new heads of agencies and usually those are going to be folks sympathetic to the president's policy agenda now there are some limits to this the president can't fire regulatory commission heads without reason but the president can fire and hire other bureaucratic positions at will for example in 2017 donald trump abruptly fired james comey who was the director of the fbi because trump believed comey was not handling the investigation into russia's interference with the 2016 election in a manner that aligned with trump's agenda now that was a highly contentious firing i admit that and i'm not commenting on it here i'm just using it as an example of a way the president can use his formal powers to reorganize the bureaucracy the president can also make use of informal powers like the executive order to bring the bureaucracy into line with the presidential policy agenda for example civil rights were a huge agenda item for president lyndon b johnson and in 1964 he signed the civil rights act into law which prohibited employment discrimination based on race gender or religion and you know hey that was a good thing but the implementation of this law meant that if discrimination did occur the agencies responsible for enforcing it would only know about it after the fact but johnson decided to sign executive order 11246 which took civil rights and employment one step further this executive order mandated that any contractors hired by the federal government had to take affirmative action not only to avoid discrimination but also to populate their organizations with women and minorities and other discriminated groups now the president of course would love it if the bureaucracy would operate entirely within the presidential will but since the bureaucracy is also responsible to congress that doesn't happen and sometimes that can cause inefficiencies in the execution of the law however the biggest culprit for bureaucratic slowdown is compliance monitoring when a regulatory agency imposes rules on an industry they must go through the laborious process of following up with the players in those industries and make sure that they are complying and that takes a lot of time it takes a lot of work and thus can slow down the implementation of policies however that's not necessarily a bad thing since the alternative would be for bureaucratic agencies to create rules and then never follow up to see if those under the rules are following them if that's the case there's really no point to the rules okay now briefly let's talk about how the judicial branch can check the power of the bureaucracy as well since the rules and regulations being implemented by the bureaucracy directly affect the lives of americans with the force of law that means that people can appeal to the courts when one of those rules or regulations is deemed unconstitutional and this of course would be the court exercising judicial review over the bureaucracy now most of these cases the court rules in favor of the agency unless there's a blatant violation of the constitution but it is possible okay click right over here in review packet if you want help getting an a in your class and a five on your exam in may and now that you know what you need to know about unit 2 topics 14 and 15 for the ap government curriculum you might want to subscribe so that i know that you want me to keep making these videos for you and if you do well then i shall oblige heimler out