Some provisions of law authorize the Congress to provide funds through a future appropriation act to carry out a program or function. Such authorizations of appropriations may be set for one year, for more than one year, or in perpetuity. CBO tracks authorizations of appropriations that have specified expirations and identifies, annually, appropriations that are provided for expired authorizations.
For this report, which is required by law, CBO identified 1,068 authorizations of appropriations that expired before the beginning of fiscal year 2021 and 119 authorizations that were set to expire before the end of the year. CBO also identified $432 billion in appropriations for 2021 that could be associated with 402 expired authorizations of appropriations.
This report summarizes the information sorted by jurisdiction (by House and Senate authorizing committee and by appropriations subcommittee). An appendix details CBO’s methods for preparing the annual report. Supplemental data underlying the summaries is posted in sortable and searchable spreadsheets that list every authorization of appropriations that CBO is currently tracking in its Legislative Classification System.
For more information on CBO’s estimates for appropriation legislation, visit the agency’s Status of Appropriations page.