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Government Reflection

Decent Essays

Throughout the course I have learned about the many foundations and policies of American government. This class emphasizes the three branches of government and governmental policy issued from the branches including civil rights and civil liberties, social policy, and foreign policy. However, the three subject areas studied this semester that I found to be most interesting and informative are social policy, the presidency, and civil rights. Social policies promote a range of public goals. Three types of policies the federal government enacts in order to keep people from falling into poverty are education policies, health policies, and housing policies. The education policy is the most important means of providing equal opportunity for Americans. In this chapter, I learned the government’s social policies lean towards providing the largest benefits to those groups that are politically organized and those that the public see to be deserving of assistance. As a result, children and the working poor receive the least amount of benefits from the federal government and the middle class and the elderly receive the most. The working poor are typically employed in jobs that do not provide pensions or health care therefore they cannot benefit from some of the aids enjoyed by middle class Americans. There are two programs that do assist the working poor: the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps. These two programs

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