The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Business Travel Cards Act of 2011 (Public Law 112-54) authorized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to issue special cards to eligible U.S. citizens to facilitate international travel to participating countries (mostly in Asia). Under the act, DHS may not issue the cards after September 30, 2018. H.R. 2805 would make several technical changes to the program and would extend it permanently.
DHS collects a fee of $70 from applicants for the special card. Those fees are classified in the budget as offsetting receipts (a reduction in direct spending) and are available to DHS to spend without further appropriation. In fiscal year 2016 DHS collected a total of about $1 million in fees. CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 2805 would have no significant net effect on DHS spending because we expect the department would collect and spend roughly the same amounts in future years.
Because enacting the bill would affect direct spending, pay-as-you-go procedures apply; however, we estimate that the net effect would be negligible in every year. Enacting the bill would not affect revenues.
CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 2805 would not increase net direct spending or on-budget deficits in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2028.
H.R. 2805 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal governments.
On June 14, 2017, CBO transmitted a cost estimate for S. 504, the APEC Business Travel Cards Reauthorization Act of 2017, as ordered reported by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on May 17, 2017. The two bills are similar and CBO’s estimates of the budgetary effects are identical.
