Criminal Law Library Blog
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) final report, August 28,2026.*
CBO reports annually on programs whose authorizations of appropriations have already expired or will expire. This report updates CBO’s preliminary report that was released on January 15, 2026.
SUMMARY:
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. 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.
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 with specified expiration dates—the scope of this report—are only a small subset of all authorizations in law and are depicted by the second-smallest circle in the figure above.)
This final 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 (represented by the smallest circle in the figure above), as well as all programs and activities whose authorizations of appropriations will expire during the current fiscal year.
This final report updates CBO’s preliminary report, released on January 15, 2026. 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.
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. 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 proposed appropriations without authorizations from legislation have often been suspended or waived in the past, allowing the Congress to consider and adopt such appropriations.
________________________________________________
*Established in 1974, The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a federal agency within the legislative branch of the United States government. It is charged with providing members of Congress objective analysis of budgeting and economic issues to support the congressional budget process. Each year, CBO economists and budget analysts produce dozens of reports and hundreds of cost estimates for proposed legislation.