Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: 2026 Preliminary Report

Authorizations are laws that establish, modify, or continue the operation of federal agencies, programs, or activities. One type of authorization—broad enabling legislation—creates an agency, program, or activity and sets guidelines for its operation. A second type—an authorization of appropriations—provides explicit guidance to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations on the amount of funding that lawmakers envision for a particular agency, program, or activity.

Authorizations of appropriations provide guidance on funding for many—but not all—authorized agencies, programs, and activities. That guidance may be permanent or may cover only a specific period and include an expiration date. Authorizations of appropriations sometimes appear in the same statute that broadly authorizes the agency, program, or activity. They may also appear in subsequent laws that amend the enabling statutes or in separately enacted legislation.

The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 requires the Congressional Budget Office to report the following to the Congress by January 15 of each year:

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

In this report, released as a data file with a sortable spreadsheet, CBO lists nonpermanent authorizations of appropriations enacted since 1977 that have already expired or that are scheduled to expire in fiscal year 2026, which began October 1, 2025, or in the following years. (See the smallest circle in the figure below.) The spreadsheet specifies the expiration date (which is usually the last day of a fiscal year) and the amount authorized to be appropriated in the last fiscal year covered by that authorization. The data are drawn from CBO's Legislative Classification System and cover legislation enacted through September 30, 2025, the end of fiscal year 2025. Additional worksheets in the file provide instructions for sorting the data and include a glossary.

This report does not identify full-year appropriations for the current fiscal year associated with expired authorizations of appropriations. That is because it was prepared when most agencies that typically receive annual appropriations were operating under a short-term continuing resolution. After full-year appropriations for 2026 have been enacted for all agencies, CBO will release a final report for the fiscal year identifying programs and activities funded for 2026 whose authorizations of appropriations have expired. Past such reports have shown that, in most years, lawmakers enact appropriations for some agencies, programs, and activities whose authorizations of appropriations have lapsed.

If an authorization of appropriations has expired, it does not necessarily mean that the underlying authority to operate the agency, program, or activity has also expired. Programs providing medical care for veterans, for example, have sustained underlying authority. The authorization of appropriations for those programs (in Public Law 104-262) expired in 1998, but the programs currently remain authorized. The broad authorizations, which were originally enacted in 1958 (in Public Law 85-857), have been amended many times since then and are codified at 38 U.S.C. § 1701 et seq. Similarly, the authorization of appropriations for the Federal Election Commission (in Public Law 96-253) expired in 1981, but the authorization of the commission itself, originally enacted in 1972 (in Public Law 92-225), remains codified at 52 U.S.C. § 30106 et seq. Nuclear programs within the Department of Energy represent another example of sustained underlying authority. Public Law 109-58, enacted in 2005, contained the authorization of appropriations for those programs as well as the broad authorizations of the programs themselves. Although the authorization of appropriations expired in 2009, the programs all remain authorized and codified at 42 U.S.C. § 16271.

This report and the upcoming final report are intended to aid the Congress by providing relevant information about expired or expiring authorizations, but they should not be considered definitive with respect to the application of House or Senate rules about appropriating funds. Those rules may restrict lawmakers from considering an appropriation if it lacks a current authorization. The determination of whether such a restriction applies 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. Historically, rules that could strike proposed appropriations without authorizations from legislation have often been suspended or waived, thereby enabling those appropriations to be considered and adopted by the Congress.