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1 An Analysis of the Discretionary Spending Proposals in the President's 2025 Budget 1 (June 27, 2024)

handle is hein.congrec/aysoteds0001 and id is 1 raw text is: T he Administration submitted its latest annual set of budgetary proposals to the Congress on March 11, 2024.1 In this report, the Congressional Budget Office examines how the discretionary spending proposals in that budget compare with CBO's most recent baseline budget projections, which span the years from 2024 to 2034.2 The President has requested a total of $1.75 trillion in discretionary appropriations for 2025. That amount includes the effects of proposed changes in mandatory programs that would be enacted in the 12 annual appro- priation bills; those changes would, on net, reduce budget authority by $44 billion in 2025 (and increase it by $35 billion in 2026), CBO estimates.3 Excluding those effects on mandatory programs, the proposed appropri- ations for 2025 would total $1.79 trillion (see Table 1). That amount is $68 billion (or 4 percent) less than what has been appropriated for 2024 (also excluding 1. This analysis does not include the budgetary effects of the amendments to the proposed budget that the Administration submitted to the Congress on May 22, 2024. 2. Discretionary spending is controlled by appropriation acts that provide funding or otherwise specify how much money can be obligated for certain government programs in specific years. Such appropriations fund a broad array of government activities. 3. Budget authority is the authority provided by federal law to incur financial obligations that will result in immediate or future outlays of federal government funds. A proposal to delay from 2025 to 2026 the availability of certain funding for the Child Enrollment Contingency Fund ($21 billion), the Children's Health Insurance Program ($13 billion), and the Crime Victims Fund ($2 billion) accounts for $36 billion of the $44 billion reduction in budget authority attributable to proposed changes to mandatory programs in appropriation bills for 2025. Those proposals would boost budget authority by those same amounts in 2026, when the delayed funding would become available again. None of those three changes would significantly affect outlays in any year, CBO estimates. the effect of changes in mandatory programs enacted in 2024 appropriation legislation)-$59 billion less for defense and $10 billion less for nondefense activities. In addition, the President requested obligation limitations of $81 billion for certain transportation programs for 2025, 2 percent more than the amount for 2024.4 In analyzing the President's budget, CBO compares the spending that would result from the discretionary funding requested by the Administration for each year from 2025 to 2034 with the spending projected in CBO's baseline. That baseline, which reflects the assumption that current laws governing federal spending and revenues will generally remain in place, is intended to provide a benchmark that policymakers can use to assess the poten- tial effects of future policy decisions on federal spending and revenues and, thus, on deficits and debt. Both CBO's baseline and its analysis of the Administration's budget are based on the agency's most recent economic forecast and its technical assumptions.5 The baseline reflects funding provided to date for 2024 and the caps that were established by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA; Public Law 118-5) for 2025. (The Office of Management and Budget, or OMB, has determined that funding enacted to date does not exceed the caps established by the FRA for 2024.) CBO's 4. The budget authority for those transportation programs is mandatory, but the spending is constrained by obligation limitations set in appropriation acts, and thus outlays for those programs are considered discretionary. Those obligation limitations limit the amount of budget authority that can be used in a given year. 5. For CBO's most recent budget and economic projections, see Congressional Budget Office, An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034 (June 2024), www.cbo.gov/ publication/60039. Notes: All years referred to are federal fiscal years, which run from October 1 to September 30 and are designated by the calendar year in which they end. Numbers in the text, tables, and figures may not add up to totals because of rounding. Supplemental data for this analysis are available on CBO's website (www.cbo.gov/publication/60041), as are previous editions of this report (https://tinyurl.com/3aph9zde).