The pattern of spending, taxing, and providing grants in the federal system.
What is Fiscal federalism?
100
The way in which candidates attempt to manipulate the 3 Ms: money, media attention, and momentum.
What is campaign strategy?
100
An act of Congress that actually funds programs within limits established by previous bills. It usually covers one year.
What is an appropriations bill?
100
Advises Congress on the probable consequences of its decisions, forecasts revenues, and is a counterweight to the president's aid.
What is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)?
100
A theory of American democracy contending that an upper-class elite holds the power and makes policy, regardless of the formal governmental organization
What is elite and class theory?
200
Broad program grants given more or less automatically to states and communities, which exercise discretion in how the money is spent.
What are Block grants?
200
A high-tech method of raising money for a political cause or a candidate; involves sending information and requests for money to people whose names appear on lists for those who have supported similar views or candidates in the past.
What is direct mail?
200
An act of Congress that establishes, continues, or changes a discretionary government program or an entitlement. It specifies program goals and maximum expenditures for discretionary programs.
What is an authorization bill?
200
An office that grew out of the Bureau of the Budget, created in 1921, consisting of a handful of political appointees and hundreds of skilled professionals. It performs both managerial and budgetary functions.
What is the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)?
200
A particular kind of party organization that depends on both specific and material inducements for rewarding loyal party members.
What is a Party machine?
300
Grants that can be used only for specific types of state and local spending.
What are Categorical grants?
300
Political contributions earmarked for party-building expenses, not subject to contribution limits.
What is soft money?
300
The House of Representatives committee that, along with the Senate, writes the tax codes, subject to the approval of Congress as a whole.
What is the House Ways and Means Committee?
300
A three-member body appointed by the president to advise the president on economic policy.
What is the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA)?
300
Independent groups that seek to influence the political process but are not subject to the campaign contribution restrictions because they do not work directly with a candidate's campaign.
What are 527 groups?
400
A type of categorical grant where states and local governments do not apply for a grant.
What are Formula grants?
400
Program through the FEC that allows public citizens to contribute money to presidential campaigns
What is the Presidential Election Campaign Fund?
400
The Senate committee that, along with the House Committee, writes the tax codes, subject to the approval of Congress as a whole.
What is the Senate Finance Committee?
400
A key measure of inflation that relates the rise in prices over time.
What is the consumer price index?
400
An act designed to reform the congressional budgetary process. Its supporters hoped that it would also make Congress less dependent on the president's budget and better able to set and meet its own budgetary goals.
What is the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974?
500
Categorical grants awarded on the basis of competitive applications.
What are Project grants?
500
A 6 member bipartisan agency created by the an act of 1974; administers and enforces campaign finance laws.
What is the Federal Election Commission?
500
A resolution binding Congress to a total expenditure level, supposedly the bottom line of all federal spending for all programs.
What is a budget resolution?
500
The main instrument for making monetary policy in the U.S. It was created in 1913 to regulate the lending practices of banks and thus the money supply
What is the Federal Reserve System?
500
An economic theory advocated by President Reagan holding that too much income goes to taxes so that too little money is available for purchasing and that the solution is to cut taxes and return purchasing power to consumers