Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: 2026 Final Report

Summary

This report fulfills the Congressional Budget Office’s statutory requirement to report to the Congress on all programs and activities funded for the current fiscal year whose authorizations of appropriations have expired as well as all programs and activities whose authorizations of appropriations will expire during the current fiscal year.1 (Such authorizations of appropriations with specified expiration dates—the scope of this report—are only a small subset of all authorizations in law; see Figure 1.)

This final report updates CBO’s preliminary report, released on January 15, 2026.2 Because it was prepared when most agencies that typically receive annual appropriations were operating under a short-term continuing resolution, that report did not include information about 2026 appropriations for programs and activities with expired authorizations of appropriations.

CBO identified 1,447 authorizations of appropriations that expired before the beginning of 2026; 512 of those expired authorizations were associated with 2026 appropriations totaling $494 billion. (It is possible that appropriations other than those identified by CBO may be available to carry out programs and activities whose authorizations have expired.) CBO also identified 308 authorizations that were set to expire before the end of 2026.

Background and Scope of This Report

Authorizations are laws that establish 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 how it operates. A second type—an authorization of appropriations—provides explicit guidance to the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations about the amount of funding that lawmakers envision for a particular agency, program, or activity.3

Authorizations of appropriations provide guidance about 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.

Just because an authorization of appropriations has expired does not necessarily mean that the underlying authority to operate the agency, program, or activity has also expired. Programs that provide 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 P.L. 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 P.L. 96-253) expired in 1981, but the authorization of the commission itself, originally enacted in 1972 (in P.L. 92-225), remains codified at 52 U.S.C. § 30106 et seq. Nuclear programs within the Department of Energy are 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 remain authorized and codified at 42 U.S.C. § 16271.

This annual report is intended to aid the Congress by providing relevant information about expired or expiring authorizations, but it should not be considered definitive for the purpose of applying House or Senate rules about appropriating funds. Those rules may restrict lawmakers from considering an appropriation if it lacks a current authorization.4 The Speaker of the House or the Presiding Officer of the Senate determines whether such a restriction applies on the basis of advice from the relevant chamber’s Office of the Parliamentarian. Rules that could strike from legislation any appropriation that lacks a current authorization have often been suspended or waived in the past, allowing the Congress to consider and adopt such appropriations.

Data Used in This Report

Because most agencies that typically receive annual appropriations were operating under a short-term continuing resolution on January 15, 2026, CBO’s preliminary report could not include information about funding provided for programs and activities with expired authorizations of appropriations; that report provided only data on expired and expiring authorizations of appropriations. This final report includes updated data on expired and expiring authorizations and incorporates legislation enacted through April 30, 2026 (concluding with an act to amend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to extend the authorities of title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, and for other purposes, P.L. 119-87). It also includes information about the 2026 appropriations that CBO has associated with expired authorizations of appropriations.

The information summarized in this report is drawn from CBO’s Legislative Classification System (LCS) database.5 Funding identified for programs and activities with expired authorizations includes only appropriations that could clearly be associated with expired authorizations on the basis of legislative text or joint explanatory statements that accompanied the appropriation acts. It is therefore possible that other appropriations may be available to carry out programs and activities with expired authorizations.

A sortable spreadsheet published along with this report lists nonpermanent authorizations of appropriations enacted since 1978 that have already expired or that are scheduled to expire in fiscal year 2026 (which began October 1, 2025) or anytime thereafter. The spreadsheet specifies the expiration date (usually September 30, the last day of the fiscal year), the amount authorized to be appropriated in the last fiscal year covered by the authorization, and any 2026 appropriations associated with expired authorizations (which are represented by the smallest circle in Figure 1). Additional worksheets in the file provide instructions for sorting the data and a glossary.

Authorizations and Appropriations Identified for This Report

CBO identified 1,447 authorizations of appropriations that expired before the beginning of 2026 (about half of which expired at least a decade ago, with the earliest expiration year being 1980) and 308 that were set to expire by the end of 2026.6 This report shows the number of such authorizations under the jurisdiction of each House and Senate authorizing committee (see Table 1) and each appropriations subcommittee (see Table 2). More than three-fourths of all expired authorizations specified amounts of annual funding. The rest authorized appropriations of indefinite amounts.7

CBO estimates that $494 billion in funding for 2026 can be attributed to 512 of the 1,447 expired authorizations. Of that total, $369 billion is associated with specified authorizations and $125 billion with indefinite authorizations. Nearly two-thirds ($309 billion) of that $494 billion was provided for activities whose authorizations expired more than a decade ago. CBO could not identify appropriations for 2026 for the remaining 935 expired authorizations—that is, clear connections could not be made between the language of those authorizations and the amounts appropriated for 2026.8

Overall, according to CBO’s records, funding provided under expired authorizations fell from $502 billion in 2025 to $494 billion in 2026—a decrease of about 2 percent. Most of that funding is associated with a small group of expired authorizations: 23 laws were identified as major sources of expired authorizations for which appropriations were provided in both 2025 and 2026 (see Table 3).9 In 2026, those laws accounted for $440 billion of the $494 billion in total funding for expired authorizations that CBO identified.

CBO estimates that specified authorizations of appropriations set to expire during 2026 total $1,121 billion (see Table 4). Most of that amount is authorized for defense activities, which have historically been reauthorized annually.

How CBO Identifies Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations

To analyze legislation and prepare the data contained in the LCS, CBO uses a three-phase process that entails reviewing authorizations, cataloging them, and identifying appropriations for authorizations that have expired.

Phase 1: Review Authorizations

CBO’s analysts review the text of newly enacted laws to identify provisions that create new authorizations of appropriations or that amend, extend, or repeal existing ones.

To be included in this report, an authorization must meet three criteria:

• It explicitly authorizes an appropriation. CBO includes only authorizations that explicitly authorize funding for an agency, program, or activity and provide guidance to the Appropriations Committees on the amount lawmakers envision.
• Subsequent funding would be provided by 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.
• The authorization has a specified expiration date. This report excludes permanent authorizations of appropriations, which never expire.10 Thus, it is not an exhaustive list of enacted authorizations of appropriations.

Phase 2: Catalog Authorizations

During the second phase of the process, analysts update the LCS by recording new authorizations as well as repeals, modifications, and extensions of previously cataloged authorizations. The LCS contains information about each authorization: the committees of jurisdiction, the public law or section of the U.S. Code that contains the authorization, the expiration date, and the latest amount authorized before expiration. Authorizations of appropriations that do not specify a dollar amount—for example, by authorizing “such sums as may be necessary” in their statutory text or by providing a lump sum for a multiyear period—are considered indefinite.

To ensure the reliability of data cataloged during the second phase, CBO is required by law to consult with the staff of Congressional committees. CBO shares a preliminary version of the data for each 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 of 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 (if lawmakers allow them to 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 for consistency with how related appropriations are typically provided. As a result, the number of expired or expiring authorizations in the LCS may be smaller than the actual number of discrete authorizations contained in some 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. But 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 add to the existing authorization or be a subset of it. In that case, CBO catalogs both the new authorization and the existing one in the LCS, potentially causing the authorized amount 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, in which the agency attempts to connect appropriations to expired authorizations. Analysts start by assessing the list of authorizations that have expired. They then review all legislation that provides appropriations for the current fiscal year. Analysts also consult detailed tables that are sometimes provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and, when available, the joint explanatory statements accompanying the acts. Those statements may provide more details about the allocation of budget authority.

CBO’s ability to make such connections is limited by the amount of detail in those laws and related materials. If the language of the authorization and the appropriation do not align completely, CBO might not enter any appropriation amount in the LCS. If authorizations seem to overlap or interact, CBO tries to identify a separate appropriation for each authorization.

When more than one appropriation is identified for a single expired authorization, the amounts are added together. 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 Estimates

Cataloging authorizations and identifying appropriations require the judgment of analysts. Thus, the estimates presented in this report are subject to uncertainty. For example, CBO’s conventions for cataloging authorizations within the LCS may inadvertently understate or overstate the number of authorizations, skewing both the number of expired authorizations with identified funding and the dollar amounts of appropriations provided for expired authorizations. This report should therefore 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. Thus, comparisons of data between reports indicate broad trends rather than precise year-to-year changes.

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1. 1. Those reporting requirements were laid out as part of CBO’s duties and functions in section 202(e)(3) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, 2 U.S.C. § 602(e)(3), https://tinyurl.com/2ymjhrah.

2. 2. Congressional Budget Office, “Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: 2026 Preliminary Report” (January 2026), www.cbo.gov/publication/61881.

3. 3. For definitions of many of the budgetary terms used in this report, see Congressional Budget Office, Common Budgetary Terms Explained (December 2021), www.cbo.gov/publication/57420.

4. 4. Clause 2(a)(1) of rule XXI, “General Appropriation Bills and Amendments,” of the Rules of the House of Representatives, H.R. Doc. 115-177 (2019), p. 871, https://tinyurl.com/53ethuav; and clause 1 of rule XVI, “Appropriations and Amendments to General Appropriations Bills,” of the Standing Rules of the Senate, S. Doc. 113-18 (January 2013), p. 11, https://tinyurl.com/cttpbya8.

5. 5. The LCS database is available in the workbook posted as supplemental data for this report at www.cbo.gov/publication/62551#data. Those data supersede the preliminary data, which did not associate appropriations with expired authorizations; see Congressional Budget Office, “Expired and Expiring Authorizations of Appropriations: 2026 Preliminary Report” (January 2026), www.cbo.gov/publication/61881.

6. 6. Some of the expired and expiring authorizations identified for this report may have been reauthorized by legislation enacted after April 30, 2026.

7. 7. To identify appropriations for this report, CBO reviewed all appropriation acts enacted as of April 30, 2026, that provided funding for 2026. Those acts include division A of the Homeland Security and Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-86); the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-75); the Commerce, Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-74); divisions B, C, and D of the Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-37); division A of the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 (P.L. 119-4); division D of the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (P.L. 118-47); divisions A, E, and F of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (P.L. 118-42); division B of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, 2022 (P.L. 117-159); and division J of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58).

8. 8. Regardless of whether CBO could identify appropriations for this report, a federal agency may be able to determine that funding for 2026 is available for purposes covered by an expired authorization.

9. 9. CBO considered a law to be a major source of expired authorizations of appropriations in 2025 and 2026 if more than $3 billion in appropriations was identified for expired authorizations under that law in either year.

10. 10. If an authorization does not specify a particular expiration date but specifies a fiscal year, then CBO records September 30—the last day of the fiscal year—as the expiration date.