Overview
As discussed in Modules 9 and 10 and described in your textbook, a lot of the work of specifying how Federal laws will be implemented is carried out through the Federal Rulemaking process that was set up by Congress with the Administrative Procedures Act (1947). And, most of this work is done by workers variously called civil servants, bureaucrats, merit employees, professionals, and civil service employees. About 50,000 of the 2 million employees of the Federal government are involved in this process. Most of these are bureaucrats who are insulated from being fired by the president for political reasons - they can only be hired and fired for reasons having to do with their expertise. But about 4000 of them are "political appointees" who can be hired and fired for political reasons. They head the departments, agencies, and offices of the executive branch.
The subject of this paper is a proposal, made by Trump when he was president, to convert these 50,000 jobs to "Schedule F" (a type of political appointee). It was not completed before he left office, but he has promised to complete this conversion if he is re-elected. This would dramatically increase the power of whoever happens to be president.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r5_ZbDJtBHbOAr...
Include these elements in your paper:
- begin with an introduction paragraph that includes a general explanation of the proposal and the overall debate
- consider the 2 sides' arguments regarding the separation of power
- consider the 2 sides' arguments regarding democratic accountability (problems with unelected bureaucrats having too much decision making authority) VS checks on presidential power (problems with the president being able to import their will into the vast number of decisions that have to be made in the rulemaking process)
- consider the 2 sides' arguments regarding the difference between the 2 political parties and how they view the federal government
- conclude with a paragraph about which side you find more persuasive and why
- use an example from the rulemaking spreadsheet you completed with Discussion Board #4 and your knowledge of the rulemaking process somewhere in your paper: https://www.regulations.gov/document/USPS-2023-036...