1.7, 1.8 & 1.9 - Federalism and Interpretation

Which of the following statements about the federal government between 1948 and 1978 is supported by the chart?

• Federal government spending increased primarily to keep pace with increasing employment.

• Short-term decreases in the number of federal regulations led to decreases in spending and employment.

• The bulk of the increase in federal spending resulted from wage increases.

• A relatively stable number of employees administered larger federal budgets and enforced more regulations.

• The high cost of regulation prevented the federal government from hiring more workers.

Which of the following policies would the states most likely prefer according to the political cartoon?

• Federal mandates

• Regulatory preemption

• Block grants

• Categorical grants

Which of the following policies involves more state spending than federal spending?

• Military policy

• Social security

• Education

• Medicare

• Veterans affairs

Which of the following sets of Supreme Court cases best illustrates how views of federalism have shifted in the United States?

• Case 1 - Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

  Case 2 - Baker v. Carr (1962)

• Case 1 - McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

  Case 2 - United States v. Lopez (1995)

• Case 1 - Roe v. Wade (1973)

  Case 2 - McDonald v. Chicago (2010)

• Case 1 - Schenck v. United States (1919)

  Case 2 - New York Times v. United States (1971)

The following questions refer to the following excerpt from a United States Supreme Court decision.

“We are unanimously of opinion, that the law passed by the legislature of Maryland, imposing a tax on the Bank of the United States, is unconstitutional and void…This is a tax on the operation of an instrument employed by the government of the Union to carry its powers into execution. Such a tax must be unconstitutional…”

Which of the following resulted from this Supreme Court decision?

• The power of the national government was strengthened.

• The power of the Supreme Court was weakened.

• The power of state governments to tax individual citizens was clearly limited.

• Congress was given the power to coin money.

• Congress alone was given the power to charter banks.

Which of the following is a correct statement about the federal government’s role in interstate commerce?

• The federal government has no role in regulating interstate commerce.

• The federal government’s role is limited to regulating activities that may lead to federal crimes.

• The federal government’s role is limited to regulating commerce transported on interstate waterways such as the Mississippi River.

• The federal government’s role is limited to regulating the transport of agricultural goods.

• The federal government’s role has been greatly expanded through the interpretation of the interstate commerce clause.

Which of the following constitutional principles best explains why there is variation among states on the use of capital punishment?

• Separation of powers

• Judicial review

• Checks and balances

• Federalism

Refer to the passage for the following question.

In many places, classrooms are overcrowded and curricula are outdated. Most of our qualified teachers are underpaid, and many of our paid teachers are unqualified. So we must give every child a place to sit and a teacher to learn from. Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

But more classrooms and more teachers are not enough. We must seek an educational system which grows in excellence as it grows in size. This means better training for our teachers. It means preparing youth to enjoy their hours of leisure as well as their hours of labor. It means exploring new techniques of teaching, to find new ways to stimulate the love of learning and the capacity for creation....

. . . While our Government has many programs directed at those issues, I do not pretend that we have the full answer to those problems.

But I do promise this: We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings... on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.

The solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in Washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. They require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the National Capital and the leaders of local communities.

-President Lyndon B. Johnson, May 22, 1964

Which of the following actions did President Johnson suggest he would take to address problems in public schools?

• Driving down the cost of education by removing ineffective teachers

• Calling on experts to advise the federal government in finding ways to improve public education

• Increasing school accountability by requiring schools to show evidence of improvement

• Scaling back the role of the federal government and allowing state and local governments to take the lead in education policy

Which constitutional principle best explains the differences in poverty rates presented in the map?

• Checks and balances

• Federalism

• Equal protection

• Enumerated powers

Diversity of public policy throughout the United States is primarily a consequence of

• federalism

• separation of powers

• innovation within bureaucratic agencies

• decentralization in the Senate

• lack of party discipline in the House