S. 2544, GUARD Act

S. 2544 would expand existing grant programs and allow state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to use grants from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate financial fraud and scams. Under the bill, agencies could use grants to hire and train analysts and agents, obtain software and other analytical tools, and provide training on best practices related to fraud investigation. S. 2544 would require DOJ to report to the Congress annually on the activities supported by the new grants authorized by the bill. The bill also would require the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), in consultation with DOJ and federal banking regulators, to report to the Congress on the government’s efforts to combat financial fraud and statistics on the number of those crimes perpetrated each year.

The estimated budgetary effects of the legislation are shown in Table 1. The costs of the legislation fall within budget functions 370 (commerce and housing credit) and 750 (administration of justice).

Using information from DOJ about awards in recent years, CBO expects that about 210 law enforcement agencies would receive grants under the bill and that each grant would cost about $225,000, on average. Based on the historical spending pattern for similar programs, and accounting for anticipated inflation, CBO estimates that implementing S. 2544 would cost $128 million over the 2026-2031 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts. Based on the costs of similar activities, CBO estimates that the bill’s reporting requirements would cost FinCEN and DOJ less than $500,000 over that same period.

Enacting S. 2544 would require several financial regulators whose operating costs are classified as direct spending to report to the Congress. Because some of those regulators collect fees from financial institutions to offset their operating costs, CBO estimates that the bill’s reporting requirements would, on net, increase direct spending by less than $500,000 over the 2026-2036 period.

Additionally, CBO expects that the Federal Reserve would incur costs to comply with the bill’s reporting requirements; those costs reduce remittances to the Treasury, which are recorded in the budget as revenues. Thus, CBO estimates that enacting the bill would decrease revenues by less than $500,000 over the 2026-2036 period.

If federal financial regulators were to increase annual fees to offset the costs of implementing the provisions in S. 2544, the cost of an existing private-sector mandate on entities required to pay those fees would increase as well. CBO estimates that the incremental cost of the mandate would be small and would fall well below the annual threshold established in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) for private-sector mandates ($214 million in 2026, adjusted annually for inflation).

S. 2544 contains no intergovernmental mandates as defined in UMRA.

The CBO staff contacts for this estimate are Jeremy Crimm (for federal costs) and Erich Dvorak (for mandates). The estimate was reviewed by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy Director of Budget Analysis.