Public Health Law Map - Beta 5 - Medical and Public Health Law Site

1. The Legislative Branch
Congress has two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives. These houses
have different procedural rules, and their members serve terms of different lengths.
Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures, but now both senators and
representatives are popularly elected. Reflecting the original compromise between
the large states and the small states, each state has two senators, at least one
representative, and each state has as many more representatives as its share of the
national population, for a total of 435 representatives. Senators are elected from the
entire state, and representatives are elected by districts, if the state has more than one
representative. The districts for representatives are redrawn every 10 years after the
national census.
Congress is the only branch of government that can authorize the spending of
government funds and the imposition of taxes. Each proposed law (bill) must be
passed by both houses of Congress. The president can veto legislation he or she does
not like, and Congress can override a presidential veto only by a two- thirds majority
vote of both houses. The president also can propose legislation and does so each year
when he or she presents the proposed budget. Ultimately, however, it is Congress
that passes laws. To keep Congress from becoming too powerful, the Constitution
gave the power to enforce the laws to the president.
2. The Executive Branch
The President is head of the executive branch and is charged with enforcing the laws
passed by Congress. In the modern federal government, the president acts through
the agencies that make up the executive branch. These include the Department of
Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the
Department of Labor, the Department of Commerce, and several others. The heads of
these departments are members of the president’s cabinet. They are political
appointees that the president may remove at will, but the Senate must confirm the
president’s appointments to the cabinet. Many important health and public health
agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Health Care
Financing Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and
the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which investigates Medicare/ Medicaid
fraud, are part of DHHS. The heads of these units are also political appointees who
are selected by the Secretary of DHHS.
These cabinet-level agencies are created by Congress, and their powers are limited to
those given by Congress in the laws that empower the agency to act. There are also
independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and
the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which are governed by appointed boards
whose members have staggered terms. The president can replace board members
only when their terms expire. These agencies typically are charged with politically
sensitive enforcement.
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