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22 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Appropriations
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An act of Congress that permits federal agencies to incur obligations and make payments from the Treasury for specified purposes, usually during a specified period of time for a specific amount of money. An appropriations is the most common means of providing budget authority and usually follows the passage of an authorization. The two major types of appropriations are regular and supplemental appropriations. Appropriations legislation must be signed by the president.
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Authorizations
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An act of Congress that creates law that establishes or continues a federal agency, activity, or program for a fixed or indefinite period of time; specifies its general goals and conduct; and often sets a ceiling on the amount of budget authority that can be provided in an appropriations. An authorization for an agency or program is usually required before an appropriations for that agency can be passed into law.
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Baseline
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A projection of spending, revenues, and the resulting deficits or surpluses for future years, taking into account laws enacted to date and assuming no new changes in policy.
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Budget Authority
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The authority to enter into obligations that will result in immediate or future outlays. Budget authority is not necessarily the amount of money an agency or department will actually spend during a fiscal year, but merely the upper limit on the amount of obligations it can make. For example, if an agency receives $100 million in budget authority, it may hire employees, purchase equipment, and enter into contracts that obligate the federal government for present and future spending up to a total of $100 million. The annual payments by the Treasury based on those obligations are called outlays.
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Budget Enforcement Act of 1990
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Created spending caps for three categories of appropriations (Defense, Non-Defense, International); firewalls between spending categories; and PAYGO rules. The law established separate sequestration procedures for the categories of appropriations and for entitlement and other spending programs covered by PAYGO.
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Budget Resolution
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A resolution passed by Congress in response to the president's budget proposal that sets: 1) the total level of outlays and new budget authority; 2) the required level of revenues; 3) the amount of the projected deficit or surplus; 4) the size of the national debt; 5) the outlays and budget authority for each of the budget functions; 6) reconciliation instructions to the authorizations committees. The budget resolution serves a set of procedural guidelines for Congress, is not law, and is not signed by the president.
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Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974
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Law that created the basic architecture of the contemporary budget process. The law provides for: impoundment procedures; budget resolutions; reconciliation; congressional budget committees; change in the fiscal year; and five-year budgeting.
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Continuing Resolution (CR)
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Legislation enacted by the Congress and signed by the president that provides budget authority (appropriations) for programs where regular appropriations have not been enacted by the beginning of the October 1 fiscal year.
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Crosswalk
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The translation of budgetary information from one form to another; the budgetary and accounting relationship between two sets of budgetary classifications, such as budget functions and appropriations subcommittee spending jurisdictions. In the case of the budget resolution, the various committees, especially the Appropriations and revenue committees (House Ways and Means and Senate Finance), receive their 302a allocations based on the calculation of the crosswalk between the budget functions and the programs and agency budgets under the jurisdictions of the committees.
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Current Services
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An estimate of the appropriations that would be needed in future fiscal years to sustain a program at its current level of funding, usually taking into account inflation and the continued cost of a program without new changes in policy.
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Entitlements
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Legislation that requires the payment of benefits to any person or unit of government that meets the eligibility requirements set by such law.
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Functions
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The system of presenting budget authority and outlays in terms of the principal purposes those programs are intended to serve. Programs are organized by their purpose (or function), rather than by their department or agency. Thus, Function 050 Defense includes the Department of Defense and the nuclear weapons programs of the Department of Energy.
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Impoundment
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An action by the president that prevents the obligation or expenditure of budget authority. Deferrals and rescissions are two types of impoundment. A deferral, the delaying of previously approved budget authority, must be reported by the president to the Congress and the comptroller general in a deferral message. A deferral may not extend beyond the end of the fiscal year. A rescissions, the proposal to cancel previously approved budget authority, must be reported to the Congress and the comptroller general in a rescissions message. If both houses of Congress do not approve the proposed rescissions within forty-five days, the president must obligate the budget authority as it was enacted in the original appropriations bill.
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Obligations
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The amount of orders placed, contracts awarded, services rendered, or other financial commitments made by federal agencies during a given time, which will require outlays during the same or future time period.
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Outlays
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The actual amount of spending provided for by budget authority. The federal deficit is calculated as the difference between revenues and outlays.
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Pass-back
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The iterative process where the Office and Management and Budget (OMB) and the various departments and agencies develop their respective budgets, as part of the overall executive budget proposal. OMB first passes its spending guidelines to the department, and the department passes back its version of its budget, back and forth, until the budget proposal is finalized.
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PAYGO
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The requirement that changes in revenue and entitlement legislation may not increase the budget deficit. Legislative reductions in revenues and increases in entitlement spending must include offsets in the form of other revenue increases or entitlement spending reductions. PAYGO does not apply to non-entitlement appropriations.
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Reconciliation
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The budget resolution may include budget reconciliation instructions that require authorizations committees to meet the spending and revenue targets called for in the resolution. The committees must respond to these instructions by reporting changes in law in programs under their jurisdiction that will provide the necessary revenue and expenditure savings. These reported changes are gathered together by the respective House or Senate Budget Committee and are incorporated into an overarching reconciliation bill. This bill must by passed by Congress and signed by the president.
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302a and 302b Allocations
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The 302a allocation is the total amount of budget authority and outlays provided to a committee (usually the two Appropriations committees and the House Ways & Means and Senate Finance committees) from the budget resolution, based on their programs of jurisdiction. The 302b allocation is the subdivision of the 302a allocation to a committee's subcommittees.
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Scorekeeping
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The process of classifying and calculating the budgetary effects of current and proposed legislation.
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Sequestration
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The withholding of budget authority up to the amount required to be cut to meet specified deficit targets or spending caps.
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Supplemental Appropriations
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An act appropriating funds in addition to those provided for in an annual appropriations bill. Supplemental appropriations are often provided when the cost of a program exceeds initial estimates, or in times of national disaster or crisis.
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