In recent years, such growth in the state and local levels has led to an increased interest in implementation activities- those activities and tasks undertaken after a law is passed (Ripley 24). Graphical trends show that government spending, employment, and spending as a percentage of the Gross National Product have increased at a healthy pace since the beginning of our nation's existence, and such trends are predicted to continue their rise well into the twenty-first century (Ripley 25). Implementation of programs on the federal level are rarely directed straight from the national government in Washington, D.C. Most require a combination of federal field offices, state governments, local governments, and local nongovernmental actors. Such actors, through providing services to beneficiaries, have become important implementers. For example, many programs created to compensate the unemployed are implemented by a network of groups including the United States Employment Service, fifty separate state employed security agencies, and countless local offices as a result of those fifty state agencies. Other employment agencies include the national office of the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) of the United States Department of Labor, ten regional ETA offices, fifty state offices, and between five hundred and six hundred local service
delivery areas. As shown, one governmental program can easily encompass numerous agencies and office space, and with such programs arising daily, this translates into rapid governmental expansion (Ripley 26). Due to the fact that programs, whose numbers have grown significantly in recent years, need bureaucrats in order to be implemented, America's bureaucracy has increased in the same manner as its programs have. Two main factors have contributed to the growth of bureaucracy in government. First, specific external trends and events such as violence and economic difficulties cause complex growth because of the programs that are necessary to halt such problems. Second, a bureaucrat working for a specific agency has a natural tendency to improve the importance of his agency's work; thus, his efforts result in expanded bureaucracy (Ripley 43). Although some political scientists argue that a growing government will limit freedom of the people, many believe that government's increased role in the lives of Americans serves to protect civil liberties and civil rights. Throughout United States history the Supreme Court has been called upon to interpret the Constitution in one or two possible ways.