Floating a "trial balloon" is the term for anonymously giving information to a news source to test the public reaction to a policy or appointment before it is formally introduced in Congress or another forum.

Demography is the study of statistics such as birth rates, income levels, and distribution of population, which are used to measure the changing realities of population. It is important for determining change over time and for identifying historical trends, as well as for analyzing the makeup of contemporary society.

The Department of Education is the most recently created of these executive departments. It was created in 1979 and is primarily tasked with administering federal aid to universities and schools. The other departments were created in the following years: 1849—Interior; 1889—Agriculture; 1913—Labor; 1967—Transportation.

An unfunded mandate is a federal government ruling that requires state or local governments to carry out some action, procedure, or other piece of legislation, but does not actually provide any federal money in order to help the state or local government do so.

The Iron Triangle is the name used in US politics to a refer to a mutually beneficial arrangement between bureaucratic agencies, interest groups, and congressional committees. Essentially, all three groups provide one another with favorable feedback, decisions, and actions in order to meet aligned goals. It is controversial because it would seem to remove the individual American from the process of lawmaking.

An Iron Triangle is when a bureaucratic agency, an interest group, and a congressional committee works together to advance its own agenda and act in its own interests. It is generally considered detrimental to a healthy democratic process because it ignores the interests of the common good for the sake of advancing specific and narrow interests.

Congress giving more funding to the Department of Agriculture (the bureaucracy) would expand the DoA's power base. In return, agricultural lobbying groups (special interests) would gain lower regulation for their constituents. Most likely, Congress would receive electoral funding promises for its efforts. This answer best represents all three point of the Iron Triangle.

There are many concerns regarding the Military-Industrial Complex, including corrupting politicians, disproportionate military spending, an incentive to wage war on others, and private corporations gaining too much control over our ability to wage war.

The biggest problem with the Iron Triangle is it encourages government agencies to pursue more power and funding instead of the public good. Oftentimes, the Iron Triangle will even result in sacrificing the public good in exchange for power, such as lowering environmental protections in exchange for oil money donations that don't benefit the public.

The Iron Triangle establishes relationships between the most influential and informed groups in specific sectors affecting the nation. Improved communication between these groups can grease the wheels of policymaking and sometimes translate into a faster and cheaper public good.