Government Chapter 3
Public support for federal domestic spending declined after the
1960s
How many distinct eras of federalism have occurred in the U.S.?
3
In 2010, the Democratic-controlled Congress passed the ______, one of the largest expansions of federal authority since the 1960s.
Affordable Care Act
Who among the following were the authors of The Federalist Papers, which argued for ratifying the Constitution?
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison
Which of the following are reasons why the policy role of the federal government has expanded greatly since the early twentieth century?
American society is highly interdependent. Americans expect government help. The federal government has superior taxing capacity.
In the years following 1935 during the Great Depression, the Supreme Court loosened restrictions on
Congress's ability to regulate commerce. Congress's taxing and spending power. the banking industry.
Prior to the Great Depression, the ______ Party supported greater regulation of business and more rights for labor, while the ______ Party was ideologically committed to free markets and smaller government.
Democratic; Republican
Which of the following would have fought against uncontrolled business power in the era just before the Great Depression?
Democrats progressive Republicans
Which amendment of the Constitution was at the center of the famous Supreme Court case, Plessy v. Ferguson?
Fourteenth Amendment
In which of the following cases did the Supreme Court argue that the Tenth Amendment gave the states, and not the federal government, the power to regulate factory practices?
Hammer v. Dagenhart
Why is the necessary and proper clause called the elastic clause?
It allows for adjustments to the national government's implied powers.
What was the doctrine of nullification?
John C. Calhoun's argument that a state has the constitutional right to invalidate a national law
In which two legal cases did the Supreme Court rule on the authority of federal and state governments to regulate business practices?
Lochner v. New York Hammer v. Dagenhart
As a result of the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court invalidated which of the following?
Missouri Compromise
In Federalist No. 10, Madison argued which faction was best suited to guarding the interests of the new nation?
None of the answers is correct; Madison warned against the power of any faction.
Which of the following were primary goals of the welfare reform bill called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, passed by Congress in 1996?
Reduce federal spending on welfare. Reduce the number of welfare recipients. Increase the states' discretion in administering welfare programs. Increase assistance for the children of welfare recipients.
President Lyndon Johnson promoted federal initiatives to help the poor as part of his Great ______ program.
Society
What was the legal argument in McCulloch v. Maryland against the federal government establishing a national bank?
The Constitution did not expressly authorize the establishment of a national bank.
Which of the following statements best represents the American constitutional model of federalism?
The Constitution grants sovereignty to both the national and state governments.
Which of the following happened during the New Deal period?
The New Deal programs thrust federal power into policy areas previously reserved for the states. The Supreme Court struck down key pieces of the New Deal programs.
Which of the following best describes the doctrine of dual federalism?
The Supreme Court maintained a precise separation of state power and national power.
What is the connection between the Lochner decision and the Hammer decision?
The earlier Lochner decision actually made the later Hammer decision unenforceable.
Which of the following has occurred under cooperative federalism?
The federal government has been more heavily involved in policy areas traditionally reserved for the states.
Why are the states' constitutional powers called reserved powers?
The language of the Constitution reserves all powers not delegated to the national government to the states.
Under the Articles of Confederation, what problem arose because the national government had no power to levy taxes on its citizens?
The nation could not maintain an army or navy.
True or false: Madison and Hamilton thought that the federal structure would encourage the state and national governments to check each other if either became abusive to individual freedom.
True
True or false: Prior to the passage of the United States Constitution, many of the states governed under their own state constitutions, which dated back to the colonial era.
True
Which of the following was a central issue from the earliest years of the Constitution until the end of the Civil War?
Would the Union survive?
John C. Calhoun argued that the United States was founded upon
a compact between the states.
The French philosopher Montesquieu, whose ideas influenced the Anti-Federalists, claimed that what form of government would best serve people's interests?
a small republic
During the 1930s, five new cabinet departments were created to
administer federal programs in policy areas traditionally reserved to the states.
The necessary and proper, or elastic, clause of the Constitution
allows Congress to have powers that are not listed in the Constitution but are needed to exercise the listed powers.
In its decision to uphold the National Labor Relations Act, along with a subsequent ruling, the Supreme Court declared that Congress's commerce power is
as broad as the nation needs it to be.
Rather than using the Fourteenth Amendment to protect freed slaves, in 1886 the Supreme Court interpreted the amendment to provide protection to
businesses
When the Great Depression hit, Republican President Herbert Hoover
continued to fight against government intervention in the economy.
In the U.S. federal system, which of the following are the national government's responsibility?
currency regulation military defense
The process by which the national government returns powers once held by state and local governments to these governments is called
devolution.
The doctrine by which state and national authority was separated precisely is known as
dual federalism.
What are the powers specifically given to the national government by the Constitution called?
enumerated
The two trends that defined federalism in the period from 1937 to the 1990s in the U.S. are
expansion and devolution of federal authority.
A governmental structure with two levels of government in which each level has sovereignty over different policy matters and geographic areas is a ______ system.
federal
A(n) ________ system of government is one in which the power to govern is shared between a national government and smaller governments, with each retaining some exclusive power.
federal
According to the supremacy clause in Article VI of the Constitution, which layer of government prevails whenever federal and state law conflict?
federal
When Republicans recaptured congressional control in 1994, they moved to
give more power to the state and local governments
Under the U.S. Constitution, which of the following sets of powers are associated with the federal government rather than state governments?
implied enumerated
Which of the following factors contributed to the economic decline of the states and the need for a wholesale federal assistance program, such as the New Deal?
increased demand of welfare assistance declining tax revenues due to increased unemployment
The justices of the post-Civil War Supreme Court mostly favored
laissez-faire capitalism.
The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution
makes national laws the supreme law of the land.
Article I, Section 10, of the Constitution prohibits the states from which of the following actions?
making treaties with other nations raising armies waging war printing money
Chief Justice John Marshall is best described as a(n)
nationalist. activist.
In the spirit of devolution, President Ronald Reagan proposed a type of federalism, called "______ federalism" that would give more control to the states and localities.
new
Which of the following terms best describes the power relationship between the various layers of government during the era of cooperative federalism?
overlapping
At the time that the Medicare and Medicaid programs were enacted, the public
overwhelmingly supported them.
An 1886 Supreme Court ruling determined that corporations were
persons
What was behind the 1990s-era rollback of federal authority?
public opinion
A key factor in the struggle between the national and state governments to define the boundaries of federal-state power has been
public support for federal policies compared with state policies
The McCulloch and Gibbons decisions both
relied upon the necessary and proper clause. expanded national power.
The powers granted to the states in the Constitution are called ______ powers.
reserved
In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court established the ______ doctrine arguing that it did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause.
separate-but-equal
Supreme and final governing authority is known as
sovereignty.
In Federalist No. 28, Hamilton stated that the people would have an "instrument of redress," should they wish to challenge established power. What was that instrument? Multiple choice question.
state power against national power, or national power against state power
Which of the following entities are in a competitive situation regarding taxation?
states and localities
The reserved powers in the U.S. system of government fall to the
states.
Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government lacked which of the following powers?
the power to regulate interstate commerce the power to draft an army or navy
Before the New Deal, who was responsible for assisting the poor?
the states
Which of the following are the two most important forces in the evolution of the American federal structure?
the strength of partisan interests that sought to change the balance of power between the nations and the states the country's changing needs
When the key pieces of the New Deal programs were struck down by the Supreme Court, President Franklin Roosevelt responded by
threatening to pack the Court with his own justices.
A system in which the national government alone has sovereignty (final governing authority) is called a ______ system.
unitary
In a unitary system, all sovereignty rests
with the national government.