Federal government of the United States


National government of the United States



Political system of the United States

The full name of the republic is “United States of America”. No other name appears in the Constitution, and this is the name that appears on money, in treaties, and in legal cases to which it is a party (e.g. Charles T. Schenck v. United States). The terms “Government of the United States of America” or “United States Government” are often used in official documents to represent the federal government as distinct from the states collectively. In casual conversation or writing, the term “Federal Government” is often used, and the term “National Government” is sometimes used. The terms “Federal” and “National” in government agency or program names generally indicate affiliation with the federal government (Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Park Service). Because the seat of government is in Washington, D.C., “Washington” is commonly used as a metonym for the federal government.



Since the American Civil War, the powers of the federal government have generally expanded greatly, although there have been periods since that time of legislative branch dominance (e.g., the decades immediately following the Civil War) or when states’ rights proponents have succeeded in limiting federal power through legislative action, executive prerogative or by constitutional interpretation by the courts.[2][3]

One of the theoretical pillars of the U.S. Constitution is the idea of “checks and balances” among the powers and responsibilities of the three branches of American government: the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. For example, while the legislative branch (Congress) has the power to create law, the executive branch under the president can veto any legislation—an act which, in turn, can be overridden by Congress.[4] The president nominates judges to the nation’s highest judiciary authority, the Supreme Court, but those nominees must be approved by Congress. The Supreme Court, in turn, can invalidate unconstitutional laws passed by the Congress. These and other examples are examined in more detail in the text below.

Legislative branch

Seal of the U.S. Congress


Makeup of Congress

House of Representatives

The 435 seats of the House grouped by state




Different powers

The House and Senate each have particular exclusive powers. For example, the Senate must approve (give “advice and consent” to) many important presidential appointments, including cabinet officers, federal judges (including nominees to the Supreme Court), department secretaries (heads of federal executive branch departments), U.S. military and naval officers, and ambassadors to foreign countries. All legislative bills for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives. The approval of both chambers is required to pass all legislation, which then may only become law by being signed by the president (or, if the president vetoes the bill, both houses of Congress then re-pass the bill, but by a two-thirds majority of each chamber, in which case the bill becomes law without the president’s signature). The powers of Congress are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution; all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. The Constitution also includes the “Necessary and Proper Clause”, which grants Congress the power to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers”. Members of the House and Senate are elected by first-past-the-post voting in every state except Louisiana and Georgia, which have runoffs.

Impeachment of federal officers

Congress has the power to remove the president, federal judges, and other federal officers from office. The House of Representatives and Senate have separate roles in this process. The House must first vote to “impeach” the official. Then, a trial is held in the Senate to decide whether the official should be removed from office. As of 2019, three presidents have been impeached by the House of Representatives: Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. Neither Johnson nor Clinton were removed from office following trial in the Senate, while the impeachment of Donald Trump is still awaiting a trial in the Senate.[6]

Congressional procedures


Powers of Congress


Congressional oversight



Congress’s oversight function takes many forms:

  • Committee inquiries and hearings
  • Formal consultations with and reports from the president
  • Senate advice and consent for presidential nominations and for treaties
  • House impeachment proceedings and subsequent Senate trials
  • Informal meetings between legislators and executive officials

Executive branch

The executive power in the federal government is vested in the president of the United States,[8] although power is often delegated to the Cabinet members and other officials.[9][10] The president and vice president are elected as running mates by the Electoral College, for which each state, as well as the District of Columbia, is allocated a number of seats based on its representation (or ostensible representation, in the case of D.C.) in both houses of Congress.[8][11] The president is limited to a maximum of two four-year terms.[12] If the president has already served two years or more of a term to which some other person was elected, he or she may only serve one more additional four-year term.[8]


Seal of the president of the United States

The executive branch, under Article II of the Constitution, consists of the president and those to whom the president’s powers are delegated. The president is both the head of state and government, as well as the military commander-in-chief and chief diplomat. The president, according to the Constitution, must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, and “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”. The president presides over the executive branch of the federal government, an organization numbering about 5 million people, including 1 million active-duty military personnel and 600,000 postal service employees.


Vice president

Seal of the vice president of the United States


Cabinet, executive departments, and agencies



Judicial branch


Overview of the federal judiciary

Seal of the U.S. Supreme Court




There are three levels of federal courts with general jurisdiction, meaning that these courts handle criminal cases and civil lawsuits between individuals. Other courts, such as the bankruptcy courts and the Tax Court, are specialized courts handling only certain kinds of cases (“subject matter jurisdiction”). The Bankruptcy Courts are “under” the supervision of the district courts, and, as such, are not considered part of the “Article III” judiciary and also as such their judges do not have lifetime tenure, nor are they Constitutionally exempt from diminution of their remuneration.[15] Also the Tax Court is not an Article III court (but is, instead an “Article I Court”).[16]

The district courts are the trial courts wherein cases that are considered under the Judicial Code (Title 28, United States Code) consistent with the jurisdictional precepts of “federal question jurisdiction” and “diversity jurisdiction” and “pendent jurisdiction” can be filed and decided. The district courts can also hear cases under “removal jurisdiction”, wherein a case brought in State court meets the requirements for diversity jurisdiction, and one party litigant chooses to “remove” the case from state court to federal court.





Relationships between state and federal courts

Separate from, but not entirely independent of, this federal court system are the court systems of each state, each dealing with, in addition to federal law when not deemed preempted, a state’s own laws, and having its own court rules and procedures. Although state governments and the federal government are legally dual sovereigns, the Supreme Court of the United States is in many cases the appellate court from the State Supreme Courts (e.g., absent the Court countenancing the applicability of the doctrine of adequate and independent State grounds). The Supreme Courts of each state are by this doctrine the final authority on the interpretation of the applicable state’s laws and Constitution. Many state constitution provisions are equal in breadth to those of the U.S. Constitution, but are considered “parallel” (thus, where, for example, the right to privacy pursuant to a state constitution is broader than the federal right to privacy, and the asserted ground is explicitly held to be “independent”, the question can be finally decided in a State Supreme Court—the U.S. Supreme Court will decline to take jurisdiction).



Federal Revenue and Spending

The budget document often begins with the president’s proposal to Congress recommending funding levels for the next fiscal year, beginning October 1 and ending on September 30 of the year following. The fiscal year refers to the year in which it ends.


Elections and voting

Suffrage, known as the ability to vote, has changed significantly over time. In the early years of the United States, voting was considered a matter for state governments, and was commonly restricted to white men who owned land. Direct elections were mostly held only for the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures, although what specific bodies were elected by the electorate varied from state to state. Under this original system, both senators representing each state in the U.S. Senate were chosen by a majority vote of the state legislature. Since the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, members of both houses of Congress have been directly elected. Today, U.S. citizens have almost universal suffrage under equal protection of the laws[18] from the age of 18,[19] regardless of race,[20] gender,[21] or wealth.[22] The only significant exception to this is the disenfranchisement of convicted felons, and in some states former felons as well.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the representation of U.S. territories and the federal district of District of Columbia in Congress is limited: while residents of the District of Columbia are subject to federal laws and federal taxes, their only congressional representative is a non-voting delegate; however, they have been allowed to participate in presidential elections since March 29, 1961.[23] Residents of U.S. territories have varying rights; for example, only some residents of Puerto Rico pay federal income taxes (though all residents must pay all other federal taxes, including import/export taxes, federal commodity taxes and federal payroll taxes, including Social Security and Medicare). All federal laws that are “not locally inapplicable” are automatically the law of the land in Puerto Rico but their current representation in the U.S. Congress is in the form of a Resident Commissioner, a nonvoting delegate.[24]

State, tribal, and local governments





See also



  2. ^ Ford, Henry Jones (1908). “The Influence of State Politics in Expanding Federal Power”. Proceedings of the American Political Science Association. 5: 53–63. doi:10.2307/3038511. JSTOR 3038511.
  4. ^ ‘The Legislative Branch’ “The Legislative Branch”. Archived from the original on January 20, 2013. Retrieved January 20, 2013. Retrieved on January 20, 2013
  6. ^ “Trump impeachment: A very simple guide”. BBC News. December 19, 2019. Archived from the original on December 19, 2019. Retrieved December 20, 2019.
  7. ^ Kaiser, Frederick M. (January 3, 2006). “Congressional Oversight” (PDF). Congressional Research Service. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
  8. ^ a b c Article II, Constitution of the United States of America
  9. ^ 3 U.S.C. §§ 301–303
  10. ^ Barack, Obama (April 27, 2009). “Delegation of Certain Authority Under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008”. United States. Archived from the original on April 30, 2009. Retrieved July 1, 2009.
  11. ^ Amendment XXIII to the United States Constitution
  12. ^ Amendment XXII to the United States Constitution
  13. ^ Goldstein, Joel K. (1995). “The New Constitutional Vice Presidency”. Wake Forest Law Review. 30 (505).
  14. ^ Reynolds, Glenn Harlan (2007). “Is Dick Cheney Unconstitutional?”. Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy. 102 (110).
  15. ^ Federal tribunals in the United States
  16. ^ United States Tax Court
  17. ^ a b CBO Monthly Budget Review-November 2018
  18. ^ Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
  19. ^ Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
  20. ^ Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
  21. ^ Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
  22. ^ Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution
  23. ^ Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution
  24. ^ Contrary to common misconception, residents of Puerto Rico do pay U.S. federal taxes: customs taxes (which are subsequently returned to the Puerto Rico Treasury) (See Department of the Interior, Office of Insular Affairs.) Archived June 10, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, import/export taxes (See Stanford.wellsphere.com) Archived April 1, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, federal commodity taxes (See Stanford.wellsphere.com) , social security taxes (See IRS.gov), etc. Residents pay federal payroll taxes, such as Social Security (See IRS.gov) and Medicare (See Reuters.com), as well as Commonwealth of Puerto Rico income taxes (See Puertorico-herald.com and HTRCPA.com). Archived April 29, 2011, at the Wayback Machine All federal employees (See Heritage.org) Archived February 10, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, those who do business with the federal government (See MCVPR.com) Archived January 16, 2010, at WebCite, Puerto Rico-based corporations that intend to send funds to the U.S. (See Page 9, line 1.), and some others (For example, Puerto Rican residents that are members of the U.S. military, See Heritage.org and Puerto Rico residents who earned income from sources outside Puerto Rico, See pp 14–15.) also pay federal income taxes. In addition, because the cutoff point for income taxation is lower than that of the U.S. IRS code, and because the per-capita income in Puerto Rico is much lower than the average per-capita income on the mainland, more Puerto Rico residents pay income taxes to the local taxation authority than if the IRS code were applied to the island. This occurs because “the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico government has a wider set of responsibilities than do U.S. State and local governments” (See GAO.gov). As residents of Puerto Rico pay into Social Security, Puerto Ricans are eligible for Social Security benefits upon retirement, but are excluded from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico residents, unlike residents of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and residents of the 50 States, do not receive the SSI. See Socialsecurity.gov), and the island actually receives less than 15% of the Medicaid funding it would normally receive if it were a U.S. state. However, Medicare providers receive less-than-full state-like reimbursements for services rendered to beneficiaries in Puerto Rico, even though the latter paid fully into the system (See p. 252). Archived May 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine It has also been estimated (See Eagleforum.org that, because the population of the island is greater than that of 50% of the states, if it were a state, Puerto Rico would have six to eight seats in the House, in addition to the two seats in the Senate.(See Eagleforum.org, CRF-USA.org Archived June 10, 2009, at the Wayback Machine and Thomas.gov [Note that for the later, the official US Congress database website, you will need to resubmit a query. The document in question is called “House Report 110-597 – Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2007”. These are the steps to follow: Thomas.gov > Committee Reports > 110 > drop down “Word/Phrase” and pick “Report Number” > type “597” next to Report Number. This will provide the document “House Report 110-597 – Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2007”, then from the Table of Contents choose “Background and need for legislation”.]). Another misconception is that the import/export taxes collected by the U.S. on products manufactured in Puerto Rico are all returned to the Puerto Rico Treasury. This is not the case. Such import/export taxes are returned only for rum products, and even then the US Treasury keeps a portion of those taxes (See the “House Report 110-597 – Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2007” mentioned above.)
  25. ^ “A brief overview of state fiscal conditions and the effects of federal policies on state budgets” (PDF). Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. May 12, 2004. Retrieved July 30, 2008.



External links

  • USA.gov, the official U.S. Government portal.

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