Iron Triangle Essay, Research Paper

Iron Triangle

Many governments in the world, like the US have subgovernments, systems that help make the voices’ of small groups interested in specific things heard. Without many subgovernments small interest groups would not even be recongnized. The iron triangle is one of those subgovernments; congressional committees work with interest groups and a bureaucratic agency to have demands met. Thanks to the iron triangle may small interest groups have a voice in their country governments’ legislature.

Congressional committees are the part of the iron triangle that puts bills into the legislative process after they work with interest groups. A member of a congressional committee proposes a bill into the committee to be voted on. Members of congressional committees are members of the legislative branch, so when they propose the bill into their committee they work with the other members to get it passed. If one member doesn’t like the bill they can try to get the bill maker to change it to his liking so he will vote for it. For example in my congressional committee, the judiciary committee, congressman Mclenan proposed a bill to give tax cuts to banks who approve a certain amount of low income people’s loans. We all thought that other people that needed loans might be overlooked just because they were not low income people. We made him make guidelines for that issue, so we could vote for it.

Interest groups, lobbyists, large corporations, and PACs try to influence the congressional committees’ bills so they can have a say in the legislative process. When an interest group hears about a bill that is being debated on in a committee, they try to influence a members vote and they try to get a part of the bill changed. For example, a lobbyist came to me on a bill I proposed on making health care plans have no minimum requirement on benefits the company gives to its patients. He told me about how he did not get the right treatments and tests done on diseases he has and now is suffering badly from them. It was because the health plan did not have to give him anything extra. He changed my mind on the bill, and I changed the bill to setting a minimum standard on benefits given to patients.

Bureaucratic agencies give information on the subject of the bill pressuring the congressional committees to listen to the interest groups and to pass the legislature. The purpose of a bureaucratic agency is to concentrate on one specific subject and gather as much information as it can on that subject. When a bureaucratic agency gives all this information to the committee, they everything about the subject and that forces them to listen to the interest groups point of view.

When the iron triangle is spoken to be a subgovernment it is because it works just like the larger government before it. The government of the United States has an equal balance of three branches, the legislative, executive and the judiciary. Each has power over one another called checks and balances; this helps the three branches stay equal. So does the iron triangle, it has three branches. The bureaucratic agency, congressional committees, and interest groups. Each also have powers over each other that act as checks and balances. The iron triangle is a system inside the legislative branch that helps the interest groups, lobbyists, large corporations, and PACs voices be heard.