Since the establishment of the federal government, a large number and wide variety of executive branch agencies have been created to establish their power bases relative to the legislative branch, judicial branch, and other parts of the executive branch of government. They have also continued to grow to maintain their power base. Each of these federal agencies possesses its own rules and routines, and each is responsible for a unique set of policies (Wilson). The power base could consist of regulation power, financial resources, information and knowledge possessed by agencies and their employees, expertise of agency officials, as well as the voting power of federal agencies" employees, just to name a few.
One example is the newly created cabinet-level Department Homeland Security. It combined 22 federal agencies with an initial budget of $37.5 billion and a work force of almost 170,000 federal employees. The tasks of the agency, according to Bush's proposal, include controlling U.S. borders; preventing and interdicting terrorists and their weapons from entering the country; working with and coordinating state and local governments for quick responses to emergency situations; developing methods of detecting biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, developing drugs and treatments to protect the American people from weapons of mass destruction; reviewing and integrating intelligence and law enforcement data from a variety of other federal agencies (Bush). This agency represents one of the greatest concentrations of power and control within one federal agency in the last half-century (Ebeling).
One way to maintain the power base for an agency is to expand the agency over time, in terms of both its budget and responsibility. It maximizes its budget and hence attains its increased power (Niskanen). Over time, the head of the Department of Homeland Security will come to the Congress year after year claiming, on the one hand, that the department has served the nation well in fulfilling its task.
