Who Actually Runs the Federal Government?

This is one of the greatest points of confusion of the American Political system, especially for everyday people who don’t spend all their time thinking about or working for the Federal Government. Every election season, we hear some version of this:

“The President is running the government.” OR “Congress is running the government.” OR “The bureaucracy is running the government.” OR “The deep state is running the government.”

If you’re confused, that’s normal. You can think about the federal government as a group project where nobody agrees on anything, everyone has veto power, and the deadline is always yesterday.

So who actually runs it?

Short answer: Not one single person or entity.

Longer answer: You will find it here in this article!

Let’s break it down!

The Banker and Legal Boss

The Congress who:

Writes laws: Laws tell executive agencies what they can and cannot do. A lot of the bureaucracy in the federal government is in-fact an issue in the law itself. Sometimes laws are vague and sometimes they are over-detailed like appropriation bills (These ones sometimes are more than a thousand pages. So, bureaucracy again starts at the Congress. important to remind ourselves that bureaucracy is not always a bad thing.

Appropriates funds: In easy words, Congress is the only entity that has the power to make decisions about money and spending, on what, how, where, and when. Everyone should follow the Congressional spending plan.

The Head of the Executive

The President who:

Directs the ship: The President doesn’t invent new laws (This is the Congress job, as we know). The president sets priorities of their administration, directs agencies (within legal limits), appoints leaders of agencies and departments, and manages crises. The president is also the blame taker.

Presidents do have important tools: executive orders, regulatory priorities, executive budgeting proposals, and the ability to hire or fire for certain leadership positions.

But presidents run into limits fast: Courts can block actions, and Congress can refuse to follow the president’s policy agenda. The system was created to make the President powerful. But the President is not a KING.

The Agenda Translators

Political Appointees who:

Manage the team: Political appointees are the closest people to the president. They are the management team of the U.S. president. They are the department secretaries, deputy secretaries, assistant secretaries, and many other leadership roles in the different agencies and departments in the administration.

Most political appointees need to be approved by the Senate. It is part of the checks and balances.

Get the plan moving: Political appointees have multiple job objectives but they can be summarised into three main parts: set agency policy priorities, reorganize offices, and help the president to push their narratives and policy agendas.

They also often face a brutal learning curve because many arrive from campaigns, think tanks, or the private sector and suddenly meet a world where the words “you can’t” often mean “the law won’t let you.”

Those Who Make the Machine Run

Career Civil Servants who:

Keep the gears turning: Career civil servants are the permanent workforce. They don’t change with elections (and they’re not supposed to). They’re scientists, analysts, inspectors, nurses, engineers, attorneys, program managers, and investigators.

Career federal employees often hold institutional memory: they know what’s been tried before, what went wrong, what’s legal, what’s not, and what’s possible with the resources available.

They do things like: implement laws, process benefits, enforce regulations, run procurement, manage grants, respond to disasters, write technical guidance, keep airplanes safe, track public health threats, maintain infrastructure and IT systems.

Keep the agenda compliant: Do they have power? Yes, especially the power of expertise and process, BUT it’s not “secret ruler” power. It’s closer to: Here are your options, here are the tradeoffs, and here’s what the law requires.

When the government is slow, it’s often because career employees are following the laws and regulations that include specific processes and procedures. This slowness is frustrating, but it’s also what prevents the government from turning into favoritism, corruption, and chaos.

So… who’s in charge?

Think of the federal government like this:

• Congress builds the track and controls the fuel.

• The President decides the destination and sets the pace.

• Appointees steer and manage the agenda.

• Career staff keep the engine running and stop the train from flying off the rails.

• Courts are the referees who can say “nope, not legal.”

• The public is the ultimate boss (even if the boss is sometimes busy arguing online).

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So if you’re looking for one person or one group that ‘runs everything,’ you won’t find it.

The system is designed to be shared, checked, and sometimes painfully slow because the alternative is fast power with fewer constraints.

The U.S. constitution is unique when it comes to the distribution of power among different branches in the federal government. However, it is important to understand that the federal government is a collective entity that builds on shared power, competing incentives, limited resources, and a country that wants speed, fairness, and perfection all at the same time. THIS IS A TOUGH EQUATION!