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12.2: The Executive Branch

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    287317
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    In addition to the president and vice president, the executive branch of the national government consists of millions of other civilian and military employees, who combine to make it the largest of the three branches in terms of personnel. The president manages this bureaucracy primarily through his Cabinet, which consists of the vice president and 15 heads of Cabinet departments. (See Figure 13.2 in the next chapter for a list of Cabinet departments.)

    Cabinet department heads are chosen by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Each holds the title “Secretary” (Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, and so on), with the exception of the head of the Department of Justice, whose title is Attorney General. Cabinet secretaries advise the president on policy and implement the presidential and congressional directives which fall under their jurisdiction. The Department of Agriculture, for example, distributes farm subsidies, provides food stamps to low-income families, and oversees the National School Lunch Program.

    The president’s Cabinet also makes up most of the presidential line of succession. In the event that the president is unable to carry out his duties due to death, incapacitation, resignation, or removal from office, the vice president becomes the president. If the vice president is also unable to discharge the duties of the office, the presidency passes next to the Speaker of the House, then to the president pro tempore of the Senate (typically the longest-serving member of the majority party in the Senate), then to the Cabinet officials in order of their departments’ creation, until a person eligible to be president is reached. The order of succession after the vice president was established by an act of Congress in 1947, but it has never been used. Nine vice presidents have ascended to the presidency after a president’s death or resignation, but the United States has never needed to proceed further down the list to find an emergency replacement for its chief executive.

    The presidency and vice presidency require their occupants to be natural-born U.S. citizens, but the other positions in the current presidential line of succession do not. Two members of Joe Biden’s Cabinet are not natural-born U.S. citizens: Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm was born in Canada, and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas was born in Cuba. Were the United States forced to proceed that far down the line of succession to find a new president, Granholm and Mayorkas would be skipped over.

    Besides the Cabinet departments, the President is in charge of 15 agencies grouped within the Executive Office of the President, including the Office of Management and Budget, the National Security Council, and the Council of Economic Advisers. The President also oversees various independent agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The sheer number of departments and agencies under the president’s command reveals how much Americans expect out of their national government, an expectation which has grown greatly over time.


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