Government is the institution that rules a community of people and provides them with goods, services and stability. The government determines the rules that must be followed by its citizens and provides the infrastructure to accomplish a society’s goals, including economic prosperity and secure borders. Governments vary in type, but all governments seek to protect individual rights and freedoms within conditions of order and stability. Governments have three main functions: making laws, executing or implementing policies, and interpreting and applying laws. Governments are generally made up of legislative, executive and judicial branches.
Legislative:
The legislative branch of the federal government consists of Congress, which is composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Constitution grants Congress many powers, including the ability to make and amend laws, levy taxes on income, property, and sales, coin money and regulate its value, punish counterfeiters, establish post offices and roads, combat piracies, provide for an army and navy, declare war, establish courts inferior to the Supreme Court, control taxing and spending policies, and enact a variety of other statutes.
Executive:
The fifteen executive departments that make up the Cabinet serve as the President’s administrative arm, and they are joined by more than 50 independent Federal agencies like the CIA and Environmental Protection Agency. The President appoints the heads of these departments and agencies, and he or she is responsible for executing and enforcing laws passed by Congress. The President also has the power to veto bills passed by Congress.
Judicial:
The judicial branch of the Federal government interprets and applies laws, but it is not without its critics. The President nominates Supreme Court justices and judges for other judicial positions, and Congress has the power to approve or reject their choices. Congress also has the power to impeach judges and remove them from office.
Governments are a huge part of our daily lives, from paying for health care to ensuring that our food is safe to regulating the flow of traffic on the freeways. We depend on the government to protect us against natural disasters, war and terrorism. It is the guarantor of our constitutional rights and the force that checks infringements against those rights.
A government is a complex organization that makes it difficult to describe in a few words, but the most basic definition of a government is that it is an organized group of people who share responsibility for setting and enforcing rules for their community or state. Those rules usually include the way that people get things and pay for them, and they often include the ways that those rules are enforced. Governments also determine the level of benefits that their citizens receive, which may include food stamps, health insurance, education, and housing for the poor. The most important function of a government, however, is that it creates a structure through which its citizens can access the things they need to live life. This is why governments exist at city, state and national levels.