Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2021—Information for Legislation Enacted Through December 23, 2020
Report
CBO reports annually on programs whose authorizations of appropriations have already expired or will expire. CBO released information about legislation enacted through December 23, 2020. The full report will be issued in coming months.
Authorizations of appropriations are provisions of law that authorize funds to be provided through a future appropriation law to carry out a program or function; they differ from other authorizations (sometimes called enabling or organic statutes), which create a federal agency, establish a federal program, prescribe a federal function, or provide for a particular federal obligation or expenditure within a program. Authorizations of appropriations also differ from appropriations, which provide funding.
Section 202(e)(3) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 requires that the Congressional Budget Office report to the Congress by January 15 of each year on the following:
All programs and activities whose authorizations will expire during the current year, and
All programs and activities funded for the current year whose authorizations have expired.
To provide timely aid with one objective of the report—identifying expired and expiring authorizations of appropriations—CBO is posting this spreadsheet, which includes CBO’s catalog of explicit authorizations of appropriations. The list specifies the date when each authorization expired or is set to expire and the amount authorized to be appropriated in the last fiscal year covered by that authorization. The most recent public law analyzed for this spreadsheet is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps Amendments Act of 2020 (Public Law 116-259), which was enacted on December 23, 2020.
CBO is still analyzing laws that were enacted after December 23, 2020, which include numerous authorizations as well as appropriations for fiscal year 2021. Therefore, this spreadsheet does not indicate whether any funding has been provided in 2021 for authorizations that have expired. CBO will post an updated catalog containing that information when the agency publishes Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: Fiscal Year 2021 later this year.
