There are multiple types of decisions that the attorney-in-fact can be given the power to make, including the power to: 1  Make financial decisions. 2  Make gifts of money. 3  Make health care decisions, including the ability to consent to giving, withholding, or stopping medical treatments, services, or diagnostic procedures.
1 Changes in the second half of the nineteenth century dramatically increased the governmentâs regulatory power. 2  The federal civil service, created by the 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Act, ensured that bureaucrats would be hired on the basis of merit rather than political connections.
In the United States, the federal civil service was established in 1871. The Federal Civil Service is defined as all appointive positions in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the Government of the United States, except positions in the uniformed services. (5 U.S.C. Â§ 2101).he spoils system meant that jobs were used to support the American political parties, though this was gradually changed by the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 and subsequent laws. By 1909, almost two-thirds of the U.S. federal workforce was appointed based on merit, that is, qualifications measured by tests.