Ap Government Terms

They borrow money from investors and foreign governments, state and local governments through purchase of bonds, public Treasury bonds and savings bonds.

Mandatory spending is defined as those areas of the federal budget that must be enacted each year by law and are not dependent on annual review by committees of congress. Discretionary spending is defined as those areas of the budget that the congress can change year to year and includes the 13 appropriation bills that fund the various agencies of the federal government.

Most of the budget goes toward defense, Social Security, and major health programs.

The Census Bureau is a part of the Department of Commerce and has the primary responsibility of organizing and reporting the census every 10 years as required by the United States Constitution.

Refers to an income level established by the Census Bureau which is the point at which an individual is considered living in what has been called a "culture of poverty"

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 was a law that resulted in a balanced budget in 1999 and a surplus for the federal government in 2000, with options to reduce debt and another to pass new social programs as well as pass tax cuts.

Refers to a budget where expenditures exceed revenues. As a result the U.S. must borrow money to pay interest on the debt.

President George W. Bush signed 1.35 Trillion tax cut over 10 years into law. Th plan lowered current tax rates and gave instant tax rebates for every taxpayer and doubled the child tax credit.

Entitlements refer to those programs that make up the major component of mandatory spending in the federal budget. They include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense spending, Net Interest, other tested programs.

A "photo op" refers to a photo opportunity that a politician stages for maximum publicity. The media's coverage of a political campaign or a staged event results in many photo ops.

The mass media is one of the linkage institutions that connects people to their elected representatives. It refers to the manner on which print and broadcast media communicate to their audiences.

"Faithless Electors" are those people who were designated as voters in the Electoral College and decided not to cast their vote for their party's candidate. There have been 156 faithless electors and a little less than half of these electors changed their vote because the original candidate died before the Electoral College met.

An amendment to the Constitution that would eliminate the Electoral College and make the popular vote the determining factor has been proposed but it has ever been voted on.

The electoral college was incorporated into the Constitution because the Founding Fathers feared that an election determined by the popular vote would not reflect the wishes of the nation as a whole. It creates a system where the president is elected indirectly by electors from the state s based on which candidate won the greatest percentage of popular votes in each state.

Article || of the Constitution outlined the process of how electors would vote for the president and vice- president. Each elector would cast two votes- one vote for the candidate who received the most votes for president and the other vote separately for the runner up. There were no designated candidates fir vice president since the political parties did not form a ticket.