Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2024

Summary

The Congressional Budget Office tracks authorizations of appropriations that have specified expiration dates and identifies, annually, appropriations that are provided for authorizations that have expired or that will expire by the end of the current fiscal year. For this report, CBO identified 1,264 authorizations of appropriations that expired before the beginning of fiscal year 2024 and 251 authorizations that are set to expire before the end of the fiscal year. CBO also found that $516 billion in appropriations for 2024 was associated with 491 expired authorizations of appropriations.

Background

Some provisions of law authorize the Congress to provide funds through a future appropriation act to administer a program or function. Such authorizations of appropriations, which are the subject of this report, differ from other authorizations (sometimes called enabling or organic statutes) that create a federal agency, establish a federal program, prescribe a federal function, or provide for a particular federal obligation or expenditure within a program. Appropriations provide funding to agencies to administer programs and functions.

Authorizations of appropriations constitute guidance for future Congressional decisions about funding that may be necessary to implement enabling statutes; the authorizations may be contained in the enabling statutes or enacted separately. Such laws may authorize appropriations for one year, for multiple years, or in perpetuity, and those authorizations may be definite (specifying the exact amount of funding that may be provided) or indefinite (authorizing the appropriation of “such sums as may be necessary,” with no specified upper limit). CBO refers to both definite and indefinite authorizations of appropriations as explicit. (CBO does not track implied authorizations of appropriations.)

Section 202(e)(3) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (2 U.S.C. §602(e)(3)) requires CBO to report annually to the Congress on the following:

• All programs and activities funded for the current fiscal year for which the authorizations of appropriations have expired and
• All programs and activities for which the authorizations of appropriations will expire during the current fiscal year.

The information summarized in the following section is drawn from the agency’s Legislative Classification System (LCS), the database of explicit authorizations of appropriations that are not permanent, which underlies the report.1 Later in this report, CBO describes the method it uses to determine which authorizations have expired or will expire and discusses uncertainty in the aggregated information.

Historically, House and Senate rules restrict lawmakers from considering an appropriation if it lacks a current authorization.2 The determination of whether that is the case is made by the Speaker of the House or the Presiding Officer of the Senate on the basis of advice from the relevant chamber’s Office of the Parliamentarian. Although this report is intended to aid the Congress by identifying explicit authorizations of appropriations that expired before, or will expire during, this fiscal year, it is not and should not be considered definitive with respect to the application of House or Senate rules.

For this report, funding for programs and activities with expired authorizations includes only those appropriations that could clearly be associated with the authorization in legislative text or legislative history. Other appropriations may be available to carry out such programs and activities.

Authorizations and Appropriations Identified for This Report

The last piece of legislation that CBO analyzed to identify authorizations for this report was Public Law 118-63, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which was enacted on May 16, 2024. CBO identified 1,264 authorizations of appropriations that expired before the beginning of fiscal year 2024 and 251 authorizations of appropriations that were set to expire by the end of fiscal year 2024.3 CBO estimates that $516 billion was appropriated for 2024 for activities with expired authorizations, which the agency identified for each House and Senate authorizing committee (see Table 1) and appropriations subcommittee (see Table 2).4

In CBO’s estimation, 49 percent of authorizations identified for this report expired at least a decade ago; the oldest expired in 1980. More than 70 percent of such authorizations were for specified amounts of annual funding that, when combined, totaled $101 billion for the year when they were last in effect. The remainder authorized appropriations of indefinite amounts.

The $516 billion in funding for fiscal year 2024 for which authorizations have expired can be attributed to 491 expired authorizations contained in 177 laws out of all 304 laws with expired authorizations. Of that total, $395 billion is associated with specified authorizations and $121 billion with indefinite authorizations. Nearly two-thirds ($320 billion) of that $516 billion was provided for activities whose authorizations expired more than a decade ago.

CBO cannot identify appropriations for fiscal year 2024 for 773 expired authorizations—that is, clear connections cannot be made between the language of those authorizations and the statutory text and corresponding legislative history of appropriation legislation for 2024.5

Overall, according to CBO’s records, funding for expired authorizations dropped from $519 billion in 2023 to $516 billion in 2024—a decrease of about 1 percent.6

Funding for expired authorizations is mostly attributable to a small group of expired authorizations: Twenty-four laws accounted for $470 billion of the $516 billion in total funding for expired authorizations that CBO identified (see Table 3).7 Twenty-one of those 24 laws also accounted for most of the funding in 2023 for expired authorizations. 

Specified authorizations of appropriations set to expire during 2024 total $892 billion this year (see Table 4). Most of that amount is authorized for defense activities, which, historically, have been reauthorized annually.

The supplemental data file posted along with this report provides detailed information about the status of individual explicit authorizations of appropriations.

How CBO Determines Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations

The process of assembling information on expired and expiring authorizations of appropriations occurs in three phases. First, CBO’s analysts review newly enacted laws to identify provisions that establish or modify explicit authorizations of appropriations that are time-limited. Second, they catalog information about those authorizations in the agency’s LCS database. Third, they review appropriations enacted for the current fiscal year to assess whether those acts provide funding for expired authorizations.8

Phase 1: Review Authorizations

CBO’s analysts review the text of newly enacted legislation to identify provisions that create new authorizations of appropriations or that amend, extend, or repeal existing ones. To be included, each authorization must meet three criteria:

• It authorizes an appropriation explicitly. Many federal activities are governed by an enabling authorization (such as an organic statute that outlines an agency’s mission and authorities) and by an explicit authorization of appropriation; others might not have an authorization of appropriation. This report considers explicit authorizations of appropriations only. A key determinant for inclusion is the text of the law, which often includes the words “authorization of appropriation.”
• It would receive funding in an appropriation act. This report focuses on authorizations for funding that CBO expects would be provided in legislation under the jurisdiction of the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations.
• It has a specified expiration date. Authorizations of appropriations do not fit within the scope of this report if they are permanent or lack an end date.9 Because the report excludes explicit authorizations that do not expire, it cannot be considered an exhaustive list of enacted authorizations of appropriations.

Phase 2: Catalog Authorizations

During the second phase of the process, analysts update the LCS, recording new authorizations as well as repeals, modifications, and extensions. The LCS contains information about each authorization: the committees of jurisdiction, references to the public law or section of the U.S. Code that contains the authorization, the expiration date, and the latest amount authorized prior to expiration. If the authorized amount is indefinite, the LCS shows a zero.

To ensure the reliability of data cataloged during the second phase, CBO is required by law to consult with staff of Congressional committees. CBO shares a preliminary version of the data for the upcoming report and asks staff members to review items within each committee’s jurisdiction. That process helps CBO identify and correct errors in the LCS—particularly errors related to committees’ jurisdiction and the status of authorizations.

The goal for this phase is to ensure that the data related to authorizations are entered into the LCS in a way that helps analysts identify subsequent appropriations for those authorizations in future years, if they expire. In some cases, authorizations are combined to make it easier for analysts to identify appropriations for a given program or activity. For example, large authorization bills—such as the annual National Defense Authorization Act and the biennial Water Resources Development Act—can contain hundreds of discrete authorizations of appropriations for a broad range of activities of a federal department or agency. CBO consolidates many of those authorizations in the LCS to be consistent with the way related appropriations are typically provided. As a result, the number of expired or expiring authorizations in the LCS can be smaller than the actual number of discrete authorizations contained in those laws.

By contrast, if there is ambiguity about whether two authorizations of appropriations may interact or overlap, both are included in the LCS. That way, each explicit authorization is cataloged as closely as possible to the way it appears in the law. However, that treatment may result in multiple entries for some amounts authorized to be appropriated. For example, if an explicit authorization of appropriations for a series of grant programs is in place and a new law establishes an explicit authorization for a specific type of grant, analysts may not be able to determine whether the new authorization is meant to be additional to or derived from the existing authorization. In that case, CBO catalogs both the new authorization and the existing one in the LCS, potentially causing the amount authorized to be counted more than once.

Phase 3: Identify Appropriations for Expired Authorizations

Once full-year appropriation acts for the fiscal year covered by the report are enacted, CBO begins the third phase of the process. Analysts start by assessing the list of authorizations that have expired as of that time. Then, they review appropriation legislation that provides funding for the current fiscal year, including any supplemental appropriations, any permanent or advance appropriations already in place, and authorizing legislation that may include appropriation language.10 Analysts also consult detailed tables provided by the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations and the joint explanatory statements. (Joint explanatory statements accompany appropriation acts and further specify the allocation of budget authority at a more detailed level.)

The goal for this phase is to connect appropriations with expired authorizations on the basis of the appropriation acts’ text and the corresponding legislative history. CBO’s ability to make such connections is limited by the amount of detail provided in those laws and in related materials. Without a clear link, CBO cannot always associate an expired authorization with an appropriation—even if a federal agency could determine subsequently that appropriations are available for purposes covered by an expired authorization. In such cases, CBO might not identify those amounts in the LCS if the language of the authorization and the appropriation do not align. If authorizations overlap or interact, CBO tries to identify an appropriation for each authorization.

CBO aims to ensure consistency in the LCS’s records of appropriations for expired authorizations. When more than one appropriation is identified for a single expired authorization, the amounts are consolidated and attributed to that authorization for that year. If an appropriation can be associated with more than one authorization in the LCS, CBO links that appropriation with just one authorization.

Uncertainty of the Reported Statistics

Cataloging authorizations and identifying appropriations involves analysts’ judgment. For that reason, the report’s statistics are subject to uncertainty. Understating or overstating the number of authorizations can skew the number of expired authorizations with identified funding and the dollar amounts of appropriations provided for expired authorizations. Thus, this report should not be construed as providing precise information about the current state of authorizations and related appropriations. Likewise, uncertainty in the cataloging of authorizations and appropriations affects the accuracy of comparisons between datasets from year to year. Comparisons of data between one report and another indicate broad overall trends, not precise differences.