Chapter 15-- Domestic Policy Terms

1.Domestic Policy: all of the laws, government planning and government actions that affect each
individuals daily life in the United States.
2.The Policymaking Process
A. Agenda Building
i. Congress must first become aware that an issue requires congressional action.
ii. Result of a crisis, technological change, mass media campaigns, or the efforts
of lobbying groups and strong political personalities
a. George W. Bush supported the Medicare drug benefit because the
AARP campaigned for it.
B. Policy Formulation
i. Various policy proposals are discussed among government officials and the
public.
ii. Congress holds hearings, the presidents voices the administrations views,
and the topic and even become a campaign issue.
C. Public Adoption
i. Choosing a specific policy from among the proposals that have been
discussed
ii. Compromise between the Republican and Democratic Parties
D. Policy Implementation
i. Bureaucrats, courts, police, and individual citizens implement the general

government action.
E. Policy Evaluation
i. Groups both inside and outside of government conduct studies to determine
what actually happens after a policy has been in place for a given period of
time.
ii. Congress will have received significant feedback on the results of the acts
implementation.
3. Health Care
A. Reasons healthcare costs have increased:
i. Advanced technology
ii. elderly population increasing
iii. more demand for surgery
B. The Governments Role Financing Health Care
i. Government spending on health care constitutes about 45 percent of
healthcare spending
ii. Medicare- program specifically designed to support the elderly, regardless of
income
iii. Medicaid- A joint state federal program that provides medical care to the
poor. The program is funded out of general government revenues.
C. Medicare
i. Created under President Lyndon Johnson to pay hospital and physician bills

for U.S. residents over the age of sixty five.

ii. Medicare has become the second largest domestic spending program, after
social security over the last forty years.
iii. One response by the federal government to Medicare costs has been to
impose arbitrary reimbursement caps on specific procedures.
D. The Uninsured
i. Over 40 million Americans do not have health insurance or fifteen percent of
the population.
ii. The uninsured who are employed work at small businesses
iii. The costs are shifting to the uninsured.
E. One Alternative: National Health Insurance
i. The United States is the only advanced industrial country with a large pool of
citizens who lack health insurance.
ii. National Health Insurance- a plan to provide universal health insurance under
which the government provides basic health insurance to all citizens. In most
such plans, the program is funded by taxes on wages or salaries.
iii. Single-player Plan- A plan under which one entity has a monopoly on issuing
a particular type of insurance. Typically the entity is the government, and the
insurance is basic health coverage.
iv. Canada has universal healthcare but is unique because it outlaws private
parallel health-care services for its wealthier citizens.

v. Harry Truman once sought to establish a national health insurance system in

this country.
F. Another Alternative: A Health savings acount
i. Republicans in Congress have legislated a health savings account program as
an alternative to completely change the U.S. health-care industry.
4. Poverty and Welfare
A. Income Transfer- A transfer of income from some individuals in the economy to
other individuals. This is generally done by government action.
B. The Low-income Population
i. In-Kind Subsidy- A good or service such as food stamps, housing, or medical
care provided by the government to low-income groups.
C. The Antipoverty Budget
i. A large portion of the budget goes to combating poverty and to other social
programs
D. Basic Welfare
i. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families- A state administered program in
which grants from the national government are used provide welfare benefits.
The TANF program replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children
program which provided cash support for low-income families with
dependent children who have been deprived of parental support due to
death, disability, continued absence of a parent, or unemployment.

ii. One of the aims to the Personal Responsibility and Work opportunity Act
1996 was to reduce welfare spending.
iii. The Welfare Reform Act has reduced the number of families on welfare by
one half.
E. Welfare Controversies
i. Conservative and libertarian voters often object to welfare spending as a
matter of principle.
F. Other Forms of Government Assistance
i. Supplemental Security Income- A federal program established to provide
assistance to elderly person and persons with disabilities.
ii. Food stamps- coupons issued by the federal government to low income
individuals to be used for the purchase of food.
iii. Earned income Tax Credit Program- A government program that helps low
income workers by giving back part or all of their Social Security taxes.
G. Homelessness-still a problem
i. The Personal Responsibility and Work opportunity Act 1996 has increased
the number of homeless
persons. There are no hard statistics on the homeless but estimates of the
number of people without a home on any given night of the United States
ranges from 230,000 to 750,000 people.
5. Immigration

A. The Continued influx of immigrants

i. Immigration rates are among the highest they have been since their peak in the
early twentieth century.
B. Immigration and Americas Security
i. 9/11 changed American attitudes toward immigration
a. The most extreme critics of immigration policy want to shut down
Americas door to the immigrants.
6. Crime in the Twenty First Century
A. Crime in American History
i. Crime rates have remained consistent since the American Revolution.
B. Crimes committed by Juveniles
i. The number of crimes committed by Juveniles have been dropping in recent
years.
C. The Prison Population Bomb
i. The Incarceration Rate- The number of persons held in jail or prison for every
for every 100, 000
ii. International Comparisons- The united states has more people people in jail
or prison than any other country in the world. The fact is not necessarily
surprising, because the United States also has one of the worlds largest total
populations.
iii. To house a growing number of inmates, prison construction and management

have become sizable industries in the United States.

D. Federal Drug Policy
i. Illegal drugs are a major cause of crime in america. A rising percentage of
arrests are for illegal drug use or drug trafficking. The violence that often
accompanies the illegal drug trade occurs for several reasons.
ii. The war on drugs and the increased spending on drug interdiction over the
years have had virtually no effect on overall illegal drug consumption in the
United States government.
E. Confronting Terrorism
i. Terrorism is relatively new in the United States
ii. Widespread scare after 9/11
iii. The Patriot Act was implemented by George Bush to counter terrorism.
7. Environmental Policy
A. Environmentalism
i. The movement to protect the environment has been based on two major
strands of thought since its beginnings in the early 1900s.
ii. Ecology refers to the total pattern of relationships between organisms and
their environment.

B. Cleaning Up the Air and Water

i. Environmental Impact Statment- A report that must show the costs and

benefits of major federal actions that could significantly affect the quality of the
environment.
iii. The Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1990 which established tighter
standards for emissions of nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants by newly build
cars and light trucks.
iv. The Clean Water Act of 1972 amended the Federal water Pollution Control
Act of 1948 which made waters safe for swimming, which protects fish and
wildlife, and eliminates the discharge of pollutants into the water.
v. The Endangered Species Act was passed by Congress in 1973 and made it
illegal to kill, harm, or take a species listed as endangered or threatened.
vi. Global Warming or the heating of the earth due to the greenhouse effect,
the result of pollution, is at the center of environmental policy.
vii. George Bush decided to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol which was an
international agreement linked to the United Nations in order to reduce
collective emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2%.
8. Domestic Policy: Why Is It Important Today
A. Domestic policy determines how we address issues of national concern.