Authorizations and Appropriations: What's the
Difference?
"Authorization laws have two basic purposes. They establish,
continue, or modify federal programs, and they are a prerequisite under House
and Senate rules (and sometimes under statute) for the Congress to appropriate
budget authority for programs.
Some authorization laws provide spending
directly. In fact, well over half of federal spending now goes to programs for
which the authorizing legislation itself creates budget authority. Such spending
is referred to as direct, or mandatory, spending. It includes funding for most
major entitlement programs. (Some entitlements are funded in annual
appropriation acts, but the amounts provided are controlled by the authorization
law that established the entitlement.) The authorization laws that provide
direct spending are typically permanent, but some major direct spending
programs, such as the Food Stamp program, require periodic
renewal.
Discretionary spending, which is provided in the 13
appropriation acts, now makes up only about one-third of
all federal expenditures. For discretionary spending, the role of the
authorizing committees is to enact legislation that serves as the basis for
operating a program and that provides guidance to the Appropriations Committees
as to an appropriate level of funding for the program. That guidance typically
is expressed in terms of an authorization of appropriations. Such authorizations
are provided either as specific dollar amounts (definite authorizations) or
"such sums as are necessary" (indefinite authorizations).
In addition,
authorizations may be permanent and remain in effect until changed by the
Congress, or they may cover only specific fiscal years. Authorizations that are
limited in duration may be annual (pertaining to one fiscal year) or multiyear
(pertaining to two, five, or any number of specific fiscal years). When such an
authorization expires, the Congress may choose to extend the life of a program
by passing legislation commonly referred to as a reauthorization. Unless the
underlying law expressly prohibits it, the Congress may also extend a program
simply by providing new appropriations. Appropriations made available for a
program after its authorization has expired are called "unauthorized
appropriations."
Longstanding rules of the House allow a point of order
to be raised against an appropriation that is unauthorized. During initial
consideration of a bill in the House (which by precedent originates
appropriation bills), unauthorized appropriations are sometimes dropped from the
bill. However, the House Committee on Rules typically grants waivers for
unauthorized appropriations that are contained in a conference agreement. In the
Senate, there is a more limited prohibition against considering unauthorized
appropriations.
Both House and Senate rules require that when the
Committees on Appropriations report a bill, they list in their respective
committee reports any programs funded in the bill that lack an authorization.
The information in the committee reports, however, differs somewhat from the
information shown in this report. This report covers programs that at one
time had an explicit authorization that either has expired or will expire.
Unlike the lists shown in the Appropriations Committee reports, this report does
not include programs for which the Congress has never provided authorizations of
appropriations. For example, some Treasury Department programs have never
received explicit authorizations of appropriations. They receive appropriations
nonetheless because the authority to obligate and spend funds is considered
"organic"--inherent in the underlying legislation or executive action that
originally empowered the Treasury to perform particular functions.
As
mentioned above, many laws establish programs with authorizations of
discretionary appropriations that do not expire. Both the Appropriations
Committee reports and this CBO report exclude programs with that type of
authorization because its effect is permanent."
(Excerpted from a January 1998 Congressional
Budget Office report.)