Budget law is codified in Titles 2 and 31 of the United States Code. While Title 31 (Money and Finance) is a “positive law” title, which means it is—itself—federal law, Title 2 (The Congress) is a “non-positive law” title, which means it is an editorial compilation of federal statutes, i.e., it is evidence of federal law, but not law, itself. Therefore, most amendments to federal budget law, amend one of three statutes—the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, or the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010. The amendments are reflected in Title 2 of the U.S. Code. Following are links to, and brief descriptions of major budget laws and constitutional authorities.
Article I, § 5, cl. 2 – The Rules Clause
“Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.” This is relevant to the budget process because the procedures and points of order embedded in the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 are enacted as an exercise of Congress’ rulemaking authority.
Article I, § 7, cl. 1 – The Origination Clause
The Origination Clause provides that “all bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”
Article I, § 8, cl. 1 – Taxing and Spending Power
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
Article I, § 8, cl. 2 – Borrowing
This clause empowers the Congress to “To borrow Money on the credit of the United States.”
This clause is the constitutional basis for Congress having authority to issue treasury debt and creating a binding obligation to pay the debt.
Article I, § 9, cl. 4 – Taxes in Proportion to Population
“No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” Article I grants Congress authority to collect taxes, but requires direct taxes to be imposed proportional to the population of the states.
Article I, Section 9, clause 7 of the Constitution – The Appropriations Clause
“No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.”
Amendment XVI – The Income Tax
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, changed the Article I, § 9, cl. 5 requirement that federal taxes had to be proportional to population, empowering Congress to collect an income tax without apportionment among the states, and without regard to population.
Antideficiency Act (originally enacted in 1884, recodified in 1982 at 96 Stat. 877) (links below)
Provides that no department or government official can make payments, or obligate the U.S. government by contract, in excess of congressional appropriations (with criminal penalties for violations). The Act enforces Congress’ constitutional authority over the public purse. Under the Antideficiency Act, the President, acting through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), apportions appropriations by time period, function, or a combination of the two, ensuring that the agency receiving the appropriation does not use it at a rate that would require another appropriation later in the same fiscal year. The Act also triggers government shutdowns when Congress fails to appropriate funds for departments or programs by the beginning of a new fiscal year. The law was initially enacted in 1870 (16 Stat. 251) to curtail the practice of creating “coercive deficiencies” where agencies would intentionally run out of money to force Congress to provide additional funds to avoid breaching contracts. The law was amended in 1950 (64 Stat. 765) and 1982 (96 Stat. 923). It is codified in the U.S. Code sections below. The Act is also known as Section 3679 of the Revised Statutes, as amended.
Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, Pub. L. No. 67-13, 42 Stat. 20 (1921)
Requires the President to submit a national budget each year and restricted the authority of the agencies to present their own proposals. (See 31 U.S.C. §§ 1104, 1105.) With this centralization of authority for the formulation of the executive branch budget in the President and the newly established Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)), Congress also took steps to strengthen its oversight of fiscal matters by establishing the General Accounting Office, renamed the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2004. Links to additional code sections relating to the executive branch budget process follow.
The Statutory Limit on the Public Debt: Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917, Pub. L. No. 65-43, 40 Stat. 288, codified as amended in the following U.S. Code sections.
31 USC § 3101 Public Debt Limit
31 USC § 3101A A Presidential Modification of the Debt Ceiling
31 USC § 3123 Payment of Obligations and Interest on the Public Debt
Budget and Accounting Procedures Act of 1950, Pub. L. No. 81-784, 64 Stat. 832 (1950)
Authorized the GAO to audit the financial transactions of most executive, legislative, and judicial agencies and to prescribe accounting standards, in consultation with the President and the Secretary of the Treasury.
Established the congressional budget process, including annual adoption of a budget resolution to guide consideration of revenue and spending bills; established House and Senate Budget Committees to draft and enforce the budget resolution; established a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to estimate spending and revenue effects of current law and proposed legislation; and established new rescission and deferral procedures to limit presidential impoundment authority. Titles I through IX are referred to as the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, and Title X is cited as the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
Title II established declining maximum deficit amounts (intended to lead to a balanced budget in FY 1991) and the “budget sequestration” process as enforcement (automatic across-the-board spending cuts through cancellation of budget authority and other budgetary resources).
Moved the sequester trigger from GAO to OMB (due to a constitutional challenge and revised and extended the deficit targets, aiming at a balanced budget in FY 1993.
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, Pub. L. No. 101-239, 103 Stat. 2106, 2133 (1989).
Sec. 4001(a)(1) provides that the receipts and disbursements of the Postal Service Fund: (1) shall not be included in the totals of the Federal budget or the congressional budget; (2) shall be exempt from Federal budget limitations on expenditures and net lending; (3) shall be exempt from sequestration; and (4) shall not be counted for purposes of calculating the federal deficit.
Title XIII of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (OBRA-90) enacted the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 which replaced the G-R-H maximum deficit amounts with: (1) statutory discretionary spending limits enforced by sequestration (across-the-board cuts of discretionary programs); and (2) a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) requirement that new direct spending and tax cuts had to be fully offset with spending cuts or tax increases enforced by sequestration (across-the-board cuts of nonexempt direct spending programs).
Title XIII of OBRA-90 also enacted the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990. FCRA changed the budget rules for credit programs by requiring Congress to appropriate budget authority up front to cover projected delinquencies, defaults, and interest rate subsidies over the life of credit programs. By requiring the up-front appropriation of budget authority to cover the projected future costs of credit programs, FCRA allowed Congress to compare in an apples-to-apples way the budgetary costs of direct loans and loan guarantees, with more traditional grant programs.
Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-576, 104 Stat. 2838 (1990).
The Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act of 1990 outlined standards of financial performance and disclosure, vested financial management functions at covered departments in chief financial officers, and gave the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) greater authority over federal financial management.
Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) Pub. L. No. 103-62, 107 Stat. 285 (1993); and the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA), Pub. L. No. 111-352, 124 Stat. 3866 (2011).
The 1993 Act requires agencies to submit to Congress multiyear strategic plans, annual performance plans, and annual performance reports. The GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (GPRAMA) substantially modified the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA). Key provisions of GPRAMA establish a multi-step process in which the President and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) may propose to Congress that certain plans and reports be eliminated or consolidated. As a step in this process, GPRAMA requires an agency to consult with congressional committees to determine whether reports are useful or could be eliminated or consolidated. Links to code sections relating to GPRA and GPRAMA follow.
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, Pub. L. No. 103-66, Title XIV, 107 Stat. 312, 683.
Title XIV extended the discretionary spending limits and PAYGO process through FY 1998.
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796.
Title XXXI created a Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund from transferred funds, with special budgetary treatment for FYs 1995-99 as follows: expenditures from the fund to be excluded from budget resolution aggregates for purposes of Budget Act points of order; budget resolution committee allocations to separate out new budget authority and outlays from the fund; and a separate sequester mechanism to apply to spending from the fund. This provision reflects the first instance of using budget procedures to establish budgetary “floors” for specific spending, rather than as caps on spending.
Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA), Pub. L. No. 104-4, 109 Stat. 50 (1995).
The objective of UMRA is to provide policymakers and affected parties information about requirements in proposed legislation that would establish new federal mandates that are “unfunded.” UMRA requires congressional authorizing committees to include in reports a statement identifying intergovernmental (state and local) and private sector mandates (exceeding certain thresholds), and a CBO estimate of the mandates’ estimated costs to state and local governments and the private sector. UMRA enforces this informational requirement by allowing any Representative or Senator to raise a procedural objection to legislation that fails to include the required unfunded mandates statement in its committee report unless the legislation either “authorizes appropriations” or provides direct funding to cover the costs. This requirement can be waived by a simple majority in the Congress.
Line-Item Veto Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-130, 110 Stat. 1200. [Ruled unconstitutional.]
Granted the President authority to cancel individual items of discretionary spending, new direct spending, and limited tax benefits in legislation. Ruled unconstitutional in Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998) where the majority held that the cancellation procedures set forth in the Act violate the Presentment Clause, Art. I, § 7, cl. 2, of the Constitution because it impermissibly gave the power to unilaterally amend or repeal parts of statutes that had been duly passed by Congress. The decision of the Court, in a six-to-three majority, was delivered by Justice John Paul Stevens.
Budget Enforcement Act of 1997, Pub. L. No. 105-33, Title X, 111 Stat. 677.
Title X of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 extended the statutory limits on discretionary spending and the PAYGO requirements for direct spending and revenues through FY 2002; and applied the Senate’s supermajority requirement for budget waivers to additional points of order in sec. 10119.
Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, Pub. L. No. 105-178, 112 Stat. 107 (June 9, 1998).
Title VIII (“Transportation Discretionary Spending Guarantee and Budget Offsets”) established two additional discretionary spending categories for highway spending and mass transit spending through FY 2003, with offsets in other discretionary spending. The spending allowed under the new caps for transportation programs exceeded the reduction in the amounts allowed for other discretionary spending. The purpose of the new categories was to guarantee increased spending levels for highway and mass transit spending. Title VIII contains a provision (section 8102) exempting that title and section 1102 from pay-as-you-go procedures. Technical corrections were subsequently made by H.R. 2676, Pub. L. No. 105-206 on July 22, 1998. See the CBO cost estimate for further details.
FY 2001 Interior Appropriations Act, P.L. 106-291, 114 Stat. 922 (2000).
Section 801 of the FY 2001 Interior Appropriations Act established categories under the discretionary spending limits for conservation spending through FY 2006 (including acquisition, conservation, and maintenance of federal and non-Federal lands and resources as well as payments in lieu of taxes). The purpose of the new categories was to guarantee spending levels for conservation spending.
A bill to eliminate preexisting PAYGO balances, Pub. L. No. 107-312, 116 Stat. 2456 (2002).
Required the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to reduce to zero any PAYGO balances of direct spending and receipts legislation for all fiscal years under the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, as amended, in order to avoid a sequester.
Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, Pub. L. No. 109-435, 120 Stat. 3221 (2006).
Section 401 establishes in the Treasury a revolving Postal Service Competitive Products Fund to be available to the Postal Service without fiscal year limitation for the payment of: (1) costs attributable to competitive products; and (2) all other costs incurred by the Postal Service, to the extent allocable to competitive products.
Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010 (Statutory PAYGO), Pub. L. No. 111-139, 124 Stat. 8.
PAYGO returned in statutory form, with enforcement through budget sequestration, when President Obama signed the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010 (“Statutory PAYGO”). The law has no expiration date. Under Statutory PAYGO, the budgetary effects of all newly enacted revenue and direct spending laws are recorded by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on two PAYGO scorecards covering five-year and 10-year periods. Each scorecard shows the average budgetary effect of the legislation in each year over the 5-year and 10-year periods, beginning with the budget year. Shortly after a congressional session ends, OMB finalizes the two PAYGO scorecards and determines whether a violation of the PAYGO requirement has occurred (i.e., if a net deficit appears for the budget year on either the 5-year or 10-year scorecards). If so, the President is required to issue a sequestration order that implements largely across-the-board cuts in (nonexempt) direct spending programs sufficient to eliminate the violation. As was the case under the original 1990 PAYGO statute, there are numerous exemptions and escape valves to the 2010 PAYGO Act: costs designated as emergencies; many direct spending programs and activities are statutorily exempt from a PAYGO sequester; Congress may exempt any direct spending increases or tax cuts from the PAYGO requirement by including legislative language that excludes the budgetary costs of such legislation from the PAYGO scorecards; or Congress can remove (“zero out”) balances on the two PAYGO scorecards or move the balances to a subsequent year.
Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), Pub. L. No. 112–25, 125 Stat. 240.
Negotiated during a lengthy political impasse over raising the debt ceiling, the BCA imposed statutory spending limits on defense and non-defense discretionary spending (budget authority only) for each year through FY 2021 in order to reduce deficits by more than $900 billion over 9 years. The spending limits were enforced by automatic across-the-board spending cuts (“sequestration”) to eliminate any budget authority overage in the affected category (defense or non-defense). The BCA also established a congressional “Joint Committee” to achieve another $1.2 trillion in long-term deficit reduction through entitlement and tax reforms. When the Joint Committee failed to agree on a long-term deficit reduction package in the allotted time, automatic additional spending cuts of $1.2 trillion—half from defense, half from non-defense—went into effect through: (i) further reductions in the spending caps (the reduced limits being called “sequester caps”) and (ii) annual sequestration of nonexempt direct spending programs. Subsequently, the sequester caps were partially or fully rolled back by a series of Bipartisan Budget Acts, although the annual sequestration of nonexempt mandatory spending has been fully implemented and extended through FY 2031 to “offset” the rollback of discretionary reductions.
American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA), Pub. L. No. 112-240, 126 Stat. 2313.
In response to concerns that impending tax increases and automatic spending cuts would throw the economy back into recession, ATRA extended expiring tax cuts, while reducing and postponing the spending cuts. Title IX of ATRA reduced the FY 2013 BCA sequester by $24 billion, from $109.3 billion down to $85.3 billion (equally divided between defense and nondefense), and postponed the effective date of the 2011 BCA sequester from January 2, 2013 to March 1, 2013.
Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 (BBA-13), Pub. L. No. 113–67, 127 Stat. 1165.
(This was the first in a series of four Bipartisan Budget Acts aimed at increasing the Budget Control Act’s defense and nondefense discretionary spending caps, partially offset through extension of the annual Joint Committee mandatory sequester for additional years. The levels in the BBAs replaced budget resolutions for the applicable years.) Division A of this joint resolution (H.J.Res. 59, 113th Congress), designated the “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013,” increased the 2010 BCA discretionary spending limits for the defense and nondefense categories by $22 billion in FY 2014 and $9 billion in FY 2015. BBA-13 also extended the direct spending sequester beyond its statutory expiration date of FY 2021 for two additional years. The extension through FY 2023 was intended as an offset for the costs of raising the discretionary spending caps.
Military Retired Pay Restoration Act, Pub. L. No. 113-82, 128 Stat. 1009 (2013).
Section 1 of this statute extended the BCA’s annual mandatory sequester by one year, through FY 2024, as an offset for the cost of reversing a previous reduction in the cost-of-living adjustments for military retirees, setting the precedent for extending the mandatory sequester as a spending offset for non-BCA legislation.
Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, Pub. L. No. 113-93, 128 Stat. 1077 (2014).
Section 222 amended the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 to adjust the two percent maximum reduction for specified Medicare programs for FY 2024 under any presidential sequestration order to make it four percent for the first 6 months of FY 2024 and zero for the last 6 months. Section 225 excluded the budgetary effects of this Act from the PAYGO scorecard under Statutory PAYGO as well as from the Senate PAYGO scorecard.
Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (BBA-15), Pub. L. No. 114-74, 129 Stat. 584.
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 increased the discretionary spending limits for the defense and nondefense categories by $25 billion, respectively, for FY 2016 and $15 billion, respectively, for FY 2017; and offset the increased discretionary spending by extending the annual mandatory sequester by one year through FY 2025 (among other offsets). The bill also established nonbinding spending targets for Overseas Contingency Operations/Global War on Terrorism (OCO/GWOT) levels for FY 2016 and FY 2017; and temporarily suspended the debt limit through March 15, 2017, followed by an adjustment for amount borrowed.
Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (BBA-18), Pub. L. No. 115-123, 132 Stat. 64.
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 increased the discretionary spending limits for the defense and nondefense categories for FY 2018 and FY 2019. For FY 2018, the defense cap was increased by $80 billion and the nondefense cap by $63 billion; and for FY 2019, the defense cap was increased by $85 billion and the nondefense cap by $68 billion. The resulting limits were higher than the original 2011 BCA caps, but remained below the pre-BCA discretionary baseline. BBA-18 also extended the direct spending sequester by two years, through FY 2027 as an offset for the costs of increasing the limits.
Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 (BBA-19), Pub. L. No. 116-37, 133 Stat. 1049.
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 increased the discretionary spending limits for the defense and nondefense categories for FY 2020 and FY 2021. For FY 2020, the defense cap was increased by $90 billion and the nondefense cap by $78 billion; and for FY 2021, the defense cap was increased by $82 billion and the nondefense cap by $68 billion (rounded). The resulting limits were higher than the original 2011 BCA caps, but remained below the pre-BCA discretionary baseline. BBA-19 extended the annual mandatory sequester by two years, through FY 2029, as an offset for the costs of increasing the caps.
CARES § 3709 temporarily suspended the sequester of Medicare spending from May 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020 and extended the BCA mandatory spending sequester through FY 2030; and
§ 23008 exempts the budgetary effects of the legislation’s spending for coronavirus health response and agency operations from the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010 (PAYGO) and the Senate PAYGO rule (H.Con.Res. 71, 115th Congress).
Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, Pub. L. No. 116-260, 134 Stat. 1950.
Section 102 extended the temporary suspension of the Medicare sequester through March 31, 2021.
An Act to Prevent Across-the-Board Direct Spending Cuts, Pub. L. No. 117-7, 135 Stat. 251.
Section 1 extended the temporary suspension of the Medicare sequester through December 31, 2021, and modified Medicare sequestration for FYs 2030-31.
Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, Pub. L. No. 117-58, 135 Stat. 1341.
Section 90001 extended the mandatory sequester through FY 2031 as a partial offset for the infrastructure bill.
Protecting Medicare and American Farmers from Sequester Cuts Act, Pub. L. No. 117-71, 135 Stat. 1506.
Extended the temporary suspension of the Medicare sequester through March 31, 2022, and limited Medicare sequester reductions from April 1, 2022 through June 30, 2022 to 1 percent, with reductions to resume at 2 percent thereafter through FY 2031.