Although some iron triangles are naturally more lasting than others, history has shown that it is indeed quite possible to destroy an iron triangle, even the most powerful (as is evidenced by the dismantling of the nuclear power iron triangle in the 1940s and 1950s). Such dismantling typically draws most of its momentum from widespread outrage amongst the public, who in turn put constant pressure upon members of the Congress and interest groups and other officials, thus cutting off the triangle’s legs one by one. As is true for any iron triangle, the three legs are always composed of an interest group, a bureaucratic agency, and a Congressional committee (or subcommittee). Together, these three bodies form a symbiotic relationship, sharing information, resources, and support to advance their mutually agreed-upon goals. Iron triangles help further the decentralization of government, due to their transfers of power amongst their members and the dissolution and/or spread of authority which such cooperation necessarily requires. Often, the intentions and decisions reached by iron triangles end up binding the government as a whole, becoming widespread policy, with Congressional and/or Executive Branch endorsement. Such binding is helped along by the fragmentation of decision-making which iron triangles encourage, while members of Congress, the White House, and other agencies on the outside end up deferring to the iron triangle’s united front.

"Patronage" is the name given to the system of government appointment where officials are given jobs based on whether or not they supported the victorious political party. It may be seen as contrary to meritocracy, where jobs are awarded solely on the basis of merit.

The United States census is collected every ten years to determine, among other things, the population of each of state, so that their representation in the House can be fairly allocated. Reapportionment is the name given to the reordering of seats in the House, after the census count has been determined.

Deficit spending is generally defined as the government practice of spending more money in a given year than has been actively collected in revenue. It is a continuous policy of the U.S. Government in this era and is a large reason why the growing national debt remains a controversial issue.

The United States census takes place every ten years. The first census was in 1790. The primary aims of the census, aside from collecting information and statistics about the population, are to determine the representatives that each state will be granted and to acquire data for taxation purposes.

A bill of attainder could only be issued by the legislative branch of the United States government. A bill of attainder is a legislative act that declares a person, or group of people, as having committed an illegal act. It’s purpose was to render an individual or a group ineffectual by declaring them guilty without a trial. It is now seen as a violation of civil rights and is illegal in U.S. government.

The constitution stipulates that presidential appointees to cabinet positions must be confirmed by the Senate. The supreme court has no jurisdiction over appointments of any kind.

Excessive Presidential interference is not a typical obstruction when it comes to bureaucratic implementation plans. Examination of the historic record shows that most policy implementation failures occur for several key reasons, including poor program design and insufficient resources. Generally, it is up to Congress to provide a bureaucratic agency with a particular policy goal and the resources necessary to see that goal successfully implemented, but this is not always the case. Sometimes, Congress has difficulty resolving some problem within the plan’s design, so it simply passes the policy off to the appropriate agency, with the expectation that the bureaucrats will somehow resolve the issue on their own. On other occasions, Congress fails to adequately estimate the amount of resources a particular policy needs or the Legislative Branch simply does not have enough funds at the time to fully support a policy. Congress is also sometimes guilty of issuing bureaucrats with confusing, unclear, and/or contradictory instructions, so that the civil servants are left floundering, indecisive and prone to failures. Fragmentation also plays an important role in ensuring policy disaster; oftentimes, resources, information, and authority are divided up amongst various agencies, who have little opportunity or willingness to share these materials. Inefficient routines, cumbersome standard operating procedures, and too much administrative discretion have also been proven to play a decisive role in some implementation failures.

All implementation programs, regardless of policy content, require three basic ingredients: resources (both money and staffers) must be gathered, an agency must be either created or assigned to administer the program, and each program’s guidelines and goals must be developed. Implementation is an essential bureaucratic task, especially because Congress quite frequently declines to formulate details for its policy ideas, in the hopes that the bureaucrats (who are after all experts in their fields) will take up the structural mantle. While standard operating procedures (SOPs) are indeed vital to bureaucratic functioning, these procedures come much further along in the process, once implementation has already been undertaken and the agency itself is up and running. Once implementation has been successfully achieved, SOPs are used as rulebooks by bureaucrats to determine how best to do their individual jobs within each agency.

As the final bureaucratic authority, the President has several powerful tools which can be used to curb the influence of or chastise an unruly bureaucracy. However, the sole power of budget alteration is not among them – while the President can put pressure upon the Office of Management and Budget to threaten cuts to an agency’s funding, final budgetary control resides with Congress. Congress is the sole allocator of all bureaucratic funds and so while the President can exert some influence in this realm, she/he by no means has the final say. Perhaps the most well-known amongst those control mechanisms which the President does have is the executive order: an order issued directly from the President, with the intention of implementing various Constitutional provisions, and bearing the full weight of any other law or piece of legislation. The President also is endowed with the right to appoint individuals of his choice to vacant high-level bureaucratic positions (although Senate confirmation is sometimes required). As a general rule, Presidents are typically quite selective about their appointments, preferring those individuals who have a proven track record of loyalty to the President and who have demonstrated agreement with the President’s policy goals. The President is also able to reorganize or even entirely eliminate agencies, although this seldom occurs, mainly due to the sheer difficulty, controversy, and administrative chaos that such a move often generates.