As reported by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on January 29, 2015
S. 792 would impose new sanctions on Iran beginning in July 2015, unless that country has reached a long-term, comprehensive agreement on its nuclear program with the United States. Under the bill, preventing those sanctions from being imposed would require that the agreement be submitted to the Congress along with reports analyzing the extent to which such an agreement could be verified, and assessing the effects of recent sanctions relief on the Iranian economy. The President could waive the sanctions for 30 days at a time under specified conditions.
CBO estimates that enacting the bill would result in additional civil and criminal penalties. Civil penalties are deposited in the general fund of the Treasury; CBO estimates that the civil penalties would increase revenues by $1 million over the 2015-2020 period and by $4 million over the 2015-2025 period. Criminal penalties are deposited in the Crime Victims Fund and later spent; CBO estimates that the net budgetary effect of those additional penalties would be negligible. Pay-as-you-go procedures apply to this legislation because it would affect direct spending and revenues. Finally, CBO estimates that the administrative costs of implementing sanctions under the bill would total $5 million over the 2015-2020 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts.
S. 792 contains no intergovernmental mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) and would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal governments. The bill would impose private-sector mandates, as defined in UMRA, if the new sanctions outlined in the bill were to go into effect. Those sanctions would expand existing prohibitions on transactions with persons or entities associated with the government of Iran and on transactions with entities operating in specific economic zones of Iran. Because the number and value of properties and transactions that could be affected by the sanctions is probably small, CBO expects that the cost of the mandates would fall below the annual threshold for private-sector mandates established in UMRA ($154 million in 2015, adjusted annually for inflation).
