Deck 18: Policymaking and Domestic Policy

Question 1

Receiving input from hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and other parts of the medical industry that would be impacted by health-care reform policies would occur in which phase of the policymaking process?

A) Agenda building
B) Policy formulation
C) Policy evaluation
D) Policy adoption
E) Policy implementation

Answer 1

B

Question 2

President Reagan argued that instead of the federal government being responsible for guaranteeing the economic and social well-being of less fortunate citizens, such responsibility should be borne more by which group?

A) The wealthy
B) American corporations
C) International charities
D) State and local governments
E) Citizens themselves

Answer 2

D

Question 3

In the final step of the policymaking process, the policy is reviewed for its effectiveness and efficiency; if changes are needed, the issue is placed back on the policy agenda, and the cycle starts again. What is this step called?

A) Policy enactment
B) Policy formulation
C) Policy evaluation
D) Problem identification
E) Policy implementation

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which of the following was an important part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society?

A) Social Security
B) Affordable Care Act
C) Clean Water Act
D) Economic Opportunity Act
E) Works Progress Act

Question 5

Government programs designed to provide the basic living conditions necessary for all citizens are what type of program?

A) Charitable program
B) Social welfare program
C) Disability program
D) Subsistence program
E) Discretionary spending

Question 6

The assessment of policy effectiveness and making needed adjustments to improve after a given period of time is part of which step in the policymaking process?

A) Agenda building
B) Policy formulation
C) Policy evaluation
D) Policy adoption
E) Policy implementation

Question 7

Which of the following is an example of an entitlement program?

A) Amtrak
B) Title IX of the Educational Act
C) Defense spending
D) Income tax
E) Social Security

Question 8

What occurs during the policy formulation stage of the policymaking process?

A) The government is made aware of the issue that requires action.
B) Various proposals for policy are discussed both within government and among the public.
C) A specific proposal for government action is put into place.
D) Bureaucrats, the courts, police, and individual citizens determine the success of a policy.
E) How a policy has worked in practice is examined.

Question 9

How high did American unemployment reach at the depths of the Great Depression?

A) 5%
B) 10%
C) 20%
D) 25%
E) 33%

Question 10

Which of the following best describes domestic policy?

A) Policies that affect major economic variables
B) All policies that affect housing, including construction costs and insurance
C) All the laws, government planning, and government actions that affect individuals' lives in the United States
D) Matters relating to law enforcement within the borders of the United States
E) The activities of the government in its relations with other countries

Question 11

What did the Economic Opportunity Act (1964) encourage local programs to do?

A) Subsidize technical education
B) Train young corporate executives trying to succeed
C) Provide job training for seniors eligible for Social Security
D) Educate and train people for employment
E) Reach out to poor communities

Question 12

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are examples of what type of program?

A) Targeted
B) Welfare
C) Discretionary
D) Entitlement
E) Constituent

Question 13

When the federal government addresses issues such as poverty and health care, it is concerned with which of the following types of policy?

A) Social
B) Civil
C) Regulatory
D) Domestic
E) Economic

Question 14

Which of the following are examples of large-scale social welfare policy innovation and reform?

A) Progressive era and World War I
B) Civil War and the Progressive era
C) Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Great Society
D) Jacksonian Revolution and the Civil War
E) Era of Good Feelings

Question 15

Which of the following is a social welfare program?

A) Social Security
B) Education and job training programs
C) College work-study programs
D) Loans to small businesses
E) All of these are correct.

Question 16

When individuals with a stake in an issue begin to propose and develop solutions to a problem, what are they engaging in?

A) Policy enactment
B) Policy formulation
C) Policy evaluation
D) Problem identification
E) Policy implementation

Question 17

Policy formulation involves which of the following?

A) The process of making the government aware that an issue requires action
B) The discussion of proposals between governmental officials and the public
C) The process of deciding on a specific proposal
D) Concern with the implementation of policy by bureaucrats, the courts, police, and individual citizens
E) The process of examining how a policy has worked in practice

Question 18

In order to combat the high costs of a college education, direct federal loans to college students were considered. This is an example of which of the following?

A) Policy enactment
B) Policy formulation
C) Policy evaluation
D) Problem identification
E) Policy implementation

Question 19

The Affordable Health Care Act has not been fully implemented, meaning which stage of the policymaking process cannot yet be achieved?

A) Agenda building
B) Policy formulation
C) Policy evaluation
D) Policy adoption
E) Policy implementation

Question 20

The New Deal occurred under which of the following presidents?

A) Theodore Roosevelt
B) Woodrow Wilson
C) Franklin Roosevelt
D) Lyndon Johnson
E) Bill Clinton

Question 21

What is the shared federal and state health insurance program for low-income persons called?

A) Pension Protection Fund
B) Medicare
C) Medicaid
D) Social Security
E) Aged Pension Program

Question 22

After retiring at the age of 67, Louisa relies on what federal program to provide her with health insurance benefits?

A) Pension Protection Fund
B) Medicare
C) Medicaid
D) Social Security
E) Aged Pension Program

Question 23

At what age will full Social Security benefits be paid to an individual born in 1960 or later?

A) 55
B) 50
C) 67
D) 77
E) 75

Question 24

What does the feminization of poverty refer to?

A) Women are more likely than men to fight for the impoverished.
B) Women are less likely to live in poverty.
C) There is a growing trend toward poverty among women.
D) The entrance of women into the business world is a reason for lessening poverty rates.
E) Women view poverty differently than men view it.

Question 25

The minimum cash income that will provide for a family's basic needs is called which of the following?

A) Poverty level
B) Basic needs threshold
C) Minimum sustenance threshold
D) Basic needs guideline
E) Poor people's assistance level

Question 26

What is the name of the recent major health-care law mandating that individuals have health insurance?

A) Affordable Care Act
B) Medicare
C) Medicaid
D) Dream Act
E) Aged Pension Program

Question 27

Which of the following best describes how a pay-as-you-go system is financed?

A) The U.S. government borrows the proceeds to pay recipients.
B) The system must be reappropriated by Congress each year.
C) Today's workers support today's program beneficiaries.
D) All workers in effect pay for their own retirement by a mandatory process of savings.
E) Any surpluses from the Social Security system go back into the government's general revenue.

Question 28

A Social Security recipient's buying power is reduced as a result of inflation, so he or she tries to save money by buying cheaper alternatives to normal purchases. President Obama encouraged factoring this practice into the cost of living adjustment. What is this practice an example of?

A) Welfare assistance
B) Traditional CPI
C) Social Security Trust Fund
D) Chained CPI
E) Poverty level

Question 29

Which of the following is the federal health-care program that covers U.S. residents over the age of 65?

A) Affordable Care Act
B) Social Security
C) Medicaid
D) Medicare
E) S-CHIP

Question 30

Which of the following is a major cause of the feminization of poverty?

A) Women do not have marketable work skills.
B) Most federal welfare programs are geared toward men.
C) Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment removed many welfare programs created specifically for women.
D) Many women are forced to leave the full-time work force to become heads of household.
E) On average, women have less education than men.

Question 31

Which federal health insurance program covers U.S. residents age 65 and older and is paid for by a tax on wages and salaries?

A) TANF
B) Medicare
C) Medicaid
D) Social Security
E) Affordable Care Act

Question 32

A government-backed guarantee against loss by individuals without regard to need would be what type of program?

A) Social welfare
B) Entitlement
C) Redistributional
D) Public assistance
E) Social insurance

Question 33

Critics of social welfare spending have long argued that antipoverty policies result in which of the following?

A) Making poverty more attractive by removing incentives to work
B) Would be more successful if they were provided with better funding
C) Were generally successful, but did not live up to their promise and therefore should be discontinued
D) Fail because of bureaucratic cultures that oppose them
E) Would achieve most of their goals, given the proper amount of time to work

Question 34

In the Social Security program, which of the following pays for the benefits that people currently paying into the system will receive in retirement?

A) Those working when the retired receive benefits
B) The state they live in
C) Those paying federal income tax
D) Property taxes
E) Sales taxes

Question 35

Which of the following is responsible for the Medicaid program?

A) Congress
B) The states
C) Federal Reserve Board
D) Nonprofit hospitals
E) The federal government and the states share responsibility.

Question 36

Which of the following is a problem with the block grant funding program set up by TANF?

A) Individual states lack discretion for how to spend the money.
B) The funding is set to a fixed amount and does not change in response to increased need.
C) The rate of increase in funding is indexed to the federal poverty level, not inflation.
D) It does not include safeguards against employer discrimination of former welfare recipients.
E) The federal government continues to centralize and regulate the job training of TANF recipients.

Question 37

Which of the following was the first example of social insurance in the United States?

A) Aid to Families with Dependent Children
B) Health care for the elderly
C) Health care for the poor
D) Workers' compensation
E) Disability benefits

Question 38

Which of the following accurately describes Medicaid?

A) Joint state-federal program that provides medical care to the poor
B) Federal health insurance program that covers U.S. residents over the age of 65
C) Government program that takes over the economic function of providing basic health-care coverage to all citizens
D) In-kind subsidy for health care
E) Federal program established to provide assistance to elderly persons and persons with disabilities

Question 39

Which of the following comprise the largest portion of the impoverished?

A) Elderly
B) Recent retirees
C) Caucasians without high school diplomas
D) Farmers
E) Persons under 18 years old

Question 40

The 2010 law that seeks to ensure health-care insurance for American citizens is formally known as which of the following?

A) Medicaid Reform Act
B) Medicare Reform Act
C) Affordable Care Act
D) Social Security Act
E) Single Payer Act

Question 41

Which of the following would the national DREAM Act do?

A) Provide federal college tuition aid to illegal immigrants who are accepted to colleges and universities
B) Allow illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children to become eligible for legalized status
C) Make illegal immigrants legally eligible for private health insurance
D) Grant the children of illegal immigrants U.S. citizenship if they were born on U.S. soil
E) Create a legal path to citizenship for all of the people who are currently in the United States illegally

Question 42

What did the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 set strict quotas on?

A) Native American land holdings in Western territories
B) Medicare payments to the disabled
C) Education testing and reporting
D) Tax rates for the wealthy
E) The number of immigrants permitted to enter the country

Question 43

Discuss the proposals for keeping Social Security solvent. Explain which one you think would be most effective in insuring Social Security's solvency.

Question 44

Compare the goals of the New Deal and the Great Society. Discuss the degree to which the two were trying to accomplish different objectives.

Question 45

Which of the following would a young family with income below the federal poverty line be most likely eligible for?

A) DREAM Act
B) Non-means-tested benefits
C) Medicare
D) Means-tested benefits
E) DACA

Question 46

Outline and describe each step in the policymaking process using an actual policy as an example.

Question 47

Which policy goal was the National Defense Education Act of 1958 meant to achieve?

A) Encouraging social and economic equality
B) Enhancing national security
C) Increasing American global economic competitiveness
D) Holding states and local districts accountable for success
E) Forcing states to focus on the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic

Question 48

Describe the New Deal and how it was brought about by the Great Depression.

Question 49

Identify and explain the stages of the policymaking process.

Question 50

Its strong emphasis on testing led critics of the No Child Left Behind Act to argue which of the following?

A) Urban school districts would end up with more money.
B) Teachers would fail to teach what students need to know to pass the test.
C) The federal government would fail to provide sufficient funds to help schools meet the law's standards.
D) Students would become more adept at testing.
E) Educational standards would be too high for testing to be effective.

Question 51

Which of the following would be true of how Medicaid and Medicare work?

A) They would cover the exact same number of people in each state.
B) The criteria for Medicare eligibility would be the same in each state, but the criteria for Medicaid could vary from state to state.
C) The criteria for Medicaid eligibility would be the same in each state, but the criteria for Medicare could vary from state to state.
D) The criteria for who would be covered by each program would be consistent between states.
E) The criteria for both could vary from state to state.

Question 52

Which of the following reflects the Great Society attitude about education?

A) National Defense Education Act of 1958
B) Brown v. Board of Education
C) SNAP
D) DREAM Act
E) All of these are correct.

Question 53

Responsibilities for schooling reside primarily in which level of government?

A) National
B) Judicial
C) Federal
D) Appellate
E) State and local

Question 54

In an attempt to move beyond the No Child Left Behind Act, the Obama administration implemented a new nationwide education policy focused on improving achievement in math and English language arts that has become known as what?

A) Obamacation
B) Obamacares
C) Common Core
D) New World Education
E) World Class Schools

Question 55

What did President Obama do to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program?

A) Enacted
B) Retracted
C) Expanded
D) Diminished
E) Vetoed

Question 56

To curtail the activities of undocumented workers, which state passed a controversial immigration law requiring state and local police to check citizenship papers of those stopped for other offenses?

A) Arizona
B) Michigan
C) California
D) Florida
E) Texas

Question 57

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided national government aid to local school districts in order to improve the education of which group?

A) Legally segregated public schools
B) Foreign students
C) Functionally illiterate adults
D) Economically disadvantaged children
E) Students with disabilities

Question 58

Which of the following would help control health-care costs?

A) Ensuring that everyone, even undocumented immigrants, has access to health care
B) Restricting the range of procedures and providers available to patients
C) Not restricting which doctors a patient can see
D) Mandating that states only provide catastrophic care insurance
E) All of these are correct.

Question 59

Explain how the Social Security tax works. Why might it pose problems for Social Security's future solvency?

Question 60

The federal government will no longer set performance goals, determine if schools are meeting them, or decide what to do if they aren't met as a result of which of the following laws?

A) ESSA
B) NCLB
C) ESEA
D) DACA
E) ACA

Question 61

Discuss the rising costs of health care and governmental efforts to address them.

Question 62

Thinking about how the poverty level was defined before the mid-1960s, explain how a drop in the proportion of income spent on food would affect people receiving means-tested public assistance.

Question 63

Discuss the role education programs played in the Great Society's War on Poverty. Explain how the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 reflects that role.

Question 64

Compare the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. To what degree are the programs focused on the same goal?

Question 65

Discuss the problems facing the American health-care system prior to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the ways in which the ACA does or does not address those problems effectively.

Question 66

Discuss the history of immigration restriction in the United States. Explain what motives were behind immigration policy, and evaluate how that has changed over the years.

Question 67

Explain what the DREAM Act would do. Discuss whether that would be a form of "amnesty" opposed by conservative groups.

Question 68

Who, other than the poor, are recipients of public assistance, and what types of assistance do they receive?

Question 69

Can the Affordable Care Act be considered a program of national health insurance?

Question 70

Review the issues raised by immigration into the United States and the proposed reforms to the immigration system.

Question 71

Outline the goals of No Child Left Behind, and discuss the criticisms that have been made of its development and implementation. Also, discuss the Every Student Succeeds Act and the changes that have been implemented to it.

Question 72

Discuss efforts taken by Congress and President Trump to deal with the issue of illegal immigration. Compare this to the efforts taken under the Obama administration.

Question 73

Discuss the Bush and Obama administrations' proposals for legislation that would allow undocumented immigrants to become citizens. Explain the arguments against those proposals.

Question 74

Describe the chief components of the Affordable Care Act and some of the controversies surrounding it.

Question 75

Discuss how the Johnson-Reed Act limited immigration. Explain how compatible the current criteria for distributing green cards are, regarding that earlier law.

Question 76

Explain what the feminization of poverty is. Discuss how the reforms to public assistance in the 1990s affected it.

Question 77

Explain why critics of public assistance programs claim they make poverty attractive. Discuss whether the experiences of those receiving TANF benefits validate those criticisms.

Question 78

Explain the principles underlying the American health-care system and the issues facing the system.

Question 79

How is the poverty level measured, and why has criticism developed concerning the current formula? What alternative measure has been presented?

Question 80

Describe the advantages and disadvantages of a nation having a substantial immigrant population.