FY2025 Appropriations Status: In Brief

Contents

• President's Budget Submission for FY2025
• General Information
• Actions Pertaining to FY2025
• Setting a Topline Level for Appropriations
• General Information
• Actions Pertaining to FY2025
• Appropriations Committee Action
• General Information
• Actions Pertaining to FY2025
• Floor Action
• Actions Pertaining to FY2025
• 12 Regular Appropriations Bills
• Other Forms of Appropriations Legislation

Summary

Each year, Congress makes decisions about appropriations to provide discretionary funding for a broad range of government activities related to defense, transportation, education, the environment, homeland security, and community development. Congress typically provides such funds through the enactment of 12 regular appropriations bills but may also rely on temporary appropriations (continuing resolutions), as well as supplemental appropriations. This report tracks the development and consideration of such appropriations legislation for FY2025, as well as related measures and budgetary actions.

Each year, Congress makes decisions about appropriations to provide discretionary funding for a broad range of government activities related to defense, transportation, education, the environment, homeland security, and community development. Congress typically provides such funds through the enactment of 12 regular appropriations bills but may also rely on temporary appropriations (continuing resolutions), as well as supplemental appropriations. This report tracks the development and consideration of such appropriations legislation for FY2025, as well as related measures and budgetary actions.¹

President's Budget Submission for FY2025

General Information

Each year, the President is required to submit a budget request to Congress that pertains to the upcoming fiscal year beginning October 1.² This submission is often viewed as the "kick off" of the annual appropriations process. The President's budget submission is a request to Congress that reflects the President's policy priorities and offers a set of recommendations regarding federal programs, projects, and activities funded through appropriations acts as well as any proposed changes to revenue and mandatory spending laws. While it is not binding on Congress, it does provide a consolidated look at the federal budget and a basis of comparison for congressional actions. The President is statutorily required to provide Congress with specific information, including (1) proposed federal spending and revenue levels for the next five fiscal years and (2) actual spending and revenue levels from the previous fiscal year.³

The President's budget request is coordinated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) through an interactive process with agencies that generally begins approximately 10 months before submission. The budget request is required to be submitted no later than the first Monday in February, but it is not uncommon for it to be submitted after this date.⁴ Once the formal request is submitted, individual agencies typically submit to Congress additional, more detailed, information, known as "budget justifications."⁵

Following the initial submission, the President is required to send Congress an updated request by July 16 of the current fiscal year with revisions to prior estimates, referred to as the Mid-Session Review. In addition, the President may submit supplemental funding requests throughout the year.

Actions Pertaining to FY2025

The President's budget request for FY2025 was submitted on March 11, 2024.⁶ The delay was attributed, in part, to delays in enacting appropriations for FY2024. Discretionary funding for FY2024 was initially provided by a series of continuing resolutions⁷ providing funding for specified agencies until March 9, 2024, and March 23, 2024, when full year appropriations were provided. It should therefore be noted that the President's budget request and related agency budget justifications did not include enacted FY2024 funding levels. Instead, they used estimates for FY2024 derived from annualized estimates of funding provided under the continuing resolutions.

On May 22, 2024, the President submitted to Congress amendments to the FY2025 budget request,⁸ and on July 19, 2024, OMB submitted the Mid-Session Review.⁹

Setting a Topline Level for Appropriations

General Information

The Appropriations Committees of the House and Senate are tasked with developing appropriations legislation, and they have organized a system of 12 parallel subcommittees, each with responsibility for developing and managing the consideration of one regular appropriations act.

Congress has developed a formal process for granting the Appropriations Committees an overall "topline" spending limit, sometimes referred to as a 302(a) allocation.¹⁰ The allocation of discretionary spending to the Appropriations Committee essentially sets an enforceable ceiling on total appropriations. The Appropriations Committees subdivide the overall 302(a) amount among their subcommittees, effectively providing each subcommittee with its own ceiling, referred to as the 302(b) suballocations. The authority for making 302(b) suballocations belongs to the Appropriations Committees, which may later revise them. Such suballocations become effective (and enforceable) in a chamber once the Appropriations Committee in that chamber has reported them.

This formal process relies on the House and Senate agreeing on an annual budget resolution. The budget resolution does not become law—no money is spent or collected as a result of its adoption. Instead, once agreed to by both chambers in the exact same form, the budget resolution creates parameters that may be enforced through points of order, such as the Appropriations Committee's 302(a) allocation.

Congress has not adopted a budget resolution in 11 of the past 20 fiscal years. Congress has therefore developed alternative methods for establishing an enforceable topline amount for the Appropriations Committees. These substitutes include "deeming resolutions," which are deemed to serve in place of agreement on a budget resolution. Such mechanisms are not formally defined and have no specifically prescribed content. Instead, they denote the efforts of the House and Senate, often separately, to create budgetary limits. In addition to deeming resolutions, Congress may rely on discretionary spending limits set in statute.

Actions Pertaining to FY2025

While the House Budget Committee reported a budget resolution for FY2025 (H.Con.Res. 117) in June 2024, it was not considered on the House floor. The Senate did not consider a budget resolution for FY2025 in 2024.¹¹ There was no budget resolution, therefore, to give the Appropriations Committees an enforceable 302(a) allocation.

Statutory limits on discretionary spending were in effect for FY2025, however, that were established as part of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA; P.L. 118-5). As shown in Table 1, the FRA established limits on defense discretionary (all discretionary spending under budget function 050) and nondefense discretionary (all other discretionary spending) for FY2024 and FY2025.

If discretionary appropriations were enacted that exceed these statutory limits for the fiscal year, a sequester would be triggered making across-the-board reductions of nonexempt spending within the applicable category (defense and/or nondefense) to eliminate the excess spending. Such a sequester order would be required to be issued by the President within 15 calendar days after the end of a session of Congress.

Certain categories of spending were effectively exempt from limits under the FRA, as has been the case with previously enacted discretionary spending limits. Spending designated as an emergency requirement would effectively be exempt up to any amount, while funding for certain purposes—such as program integrity initiatives, disaster funding, and reemployment services—would effectively be exempt up to specified amounts.

The FRA included a provision directing the chair of the Senate Budget Committee to file in the Congressional Record a 302(a) allocation to the Senate Appropriations Committee not later than May 15, 2024. This was published in the Senate on May 14, 2024.¹² The Senate Appropriations Committee reported its full set of 302(b) suballocations on July 11, 2024 (S.Rept. 118-190). The Senate Appropriations Committee subsequently revised its 302(b) suballocations on July 24 (S.Rept. 118-197) and July 31 (S.Rept. 118-203).

The FRA did not include a similar provision directing the filing of a formal 302(a) allocation for the House. In May 2024, however, the House Appropriations Committee voted to approve draft ("interim") suballocations for all 12 subcommittees.¹³ In July 2024, the House Appropriations Committee revised those suballocations.¹⁴ The draft "interim" allocations were consistent with the topline levels established by the FRA for defense and nondefense.

In the 119^th Congress, both the House and the Senate took action on an FY2025 budget resolution (H.Con.Res. 14 and S.Con.Res. 7, respectively). This action, however, primarily involved the development of reconciliation legislation, and the topline level for FY2025 reflected actions already taken by Congress.

Appropriations Committee Action

General Information

During the initial stages of the annual appropriations process, each subcommittee will typically analyze the President's annual budget request and agency spending justifications for the upcoming fiscal year, hold hearings with testimony from agency officials supporting their budget justifications, solicit the input of other Members who do not serve on the Appropriations Committees, and draft and mark up regular appropriations bills (as well as draft a written report to accompany the bill).

Actions Pertaining to FY2025

The House Appropriations Committee began holding budget hearings in March 2024, and between May and June, the subcommittees reported all 12 bills to the full Appropriations Committee. By July 10, the House Appropriations Committee reported all 12 appropriations bills.

The Senate Appropriations Committee began holding budget hearings in April. While the subcommittees did not formally vote to send bills to the full committee, the Senate Appropriations Committee reported 11 of the 12 appropriations bills by August 1. (The committee did not report the Homeland Security appropriations bill.)

Floor Action

Actions Pertaining to FY2025

12 Regular Appropriations Bills

The full House passed five of the 12 FY2025 appropriations bills by the end of July 2024. On June 5, the House passed the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill (H.R. 8580, 118^th Congress). On June 28, the House passed the defense appropriations bill (H.R. 8774, 118^th Congress), the Homeland Security appropriations bill (H.R. 8752, 118^th Congress), and the State Department and Foreign Operations appropriations bill (H.R. 8771, 118^th Congress). On July 24, the House passed the Interior and Environment appropriations bill (H.R. 8998, 118^th Congress). On July 11, the Legislative Branch appropriations bill (H.R. 8772, 118^th Congress) was considered but failed to pass the House.

The full Senate did not consider annual FY2025 appropriations legislation.

Other Forms of Appropriations Legislation

In addition to regular appropriations acts, Congress typically develops and considers appropriations in the form of continuing and supplemental appropriations acts every year. These acts are used for different purposes than regular appropriations acts, and consequently their form and congressional consideration differ.

Continuing Appropriations

Congress has not typically completed its consideration of regular appropriations bills before the start of the next fiscal year on October 1.¹⁵ Because most of the budget authority provided in regular appropriations acts expires at the end of the fiscal year (September 30), Congress may use one or more continuing appropriations acts (often referred to as a "continuing resolution" or a CR) to provide interim funding. If there is an interval during a fiscal year when appropriations for a particular project or activity are not enacted into law, either in the form of a regular appropriations act or a CR, a funding gap (also referred to as a funding lapse) may occur that could cause a government shutdown.¹⁶

Actions Pertaining to FY2025

On September 18, 2024, the House took up a CR for FY2025, H.R. 9494 (118^th Congress), which would have provided appropriations through March 28, 2025. The bill also included language prohibiting a state from accepting and processing an application to register to vote in a federal election unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. The bill would have extended several expiring programs and authorities, including the National Flood Insurance Program. The bill was considered under the terms of a special rule reported from the House Committee on Rules, H.Res. 1430 (118^th Congress), which had been adopted by the House the previous week (September 10, 2024), by a vote of 209-206. H.R. 9494, however, failed to pass the House by a vote of 202-220.

One week later, on September 25, 2024, the House took up a CR for FY2025, H.R. 9747 (118^th Congress), which provided appropriations through December 20, 2024; extended several expiring programs and authorities, including the National Flood Insurance Program; and provided additional funding for the U.S. Secret Service. The CR was considered under the suspension of the rules procedure and passed the House by a vote of 341-82. Later that day, the Senate considered H.R. 9747 under the terms of a unanimous consent agreement and passed the bill by a vote of 78-18. On September 26, the measure was signed into law by President Biden.¹⁷

According to the Congressional Budget Office's cost estimate for H.R. 9747, the levels of budget authority in the bill included an annualized base defense level of $888.1 billion and a base nondefense level of $707.6 billion in nondefense for a total of $1.596 trillion.¹⁸ These levels were therefore in compliance with the FRA defense and nondefense discretionary spending limits for FY2025 (as described above).

On December 19, 2024, the House took up H.R. 10515 (118^th Congress), a measure to extend the duration of the CR for FY2025 through March 14, 2025. The bill also included other divisions that would have provided supplemental appropriations for disaster relief, extended certain health laws, extended certain agriculture programs, and addressed other matters, including a suspension of the debt limit through January 29, 2027. The bill was considered under suspension of the rules but failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote, 174-235.

On December 20, 2024, the House subsequently considered H.R. 10545 (118^th Congress), a measure to extend the duration of the CR for FY2025 through March 14, 2025. The bill also included other divisions that provided supplemental appropriations for disaster relief, extended certain health laws, extended certain agriculture programs, and addressed other matters. The bill was considered under suspension of the rules and passed, 366-34. The bill passed the Senate on December 21, 85-11, and was signed into law by President Biden the same day.¹⁹

According to the Congressional Budget Office's cost estimate for H.R. 10545, the levels of budget authority in the bill included an annualized base defense level of $888.1 billion and a base nondefense level of $708.2 billion for a total of $1.596 trillion.²⁰ These levels were therefore in compliance with the FRA defense and nondefense discretionary spending limits for FY2025 (as described above).

On March 10, 2025, H.R. 1968, the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, was introduced to provide for continuing appropriations through the end of FY2025. The bill was subsequently considered by the House on March 11. H.Res. 211, a resolution reported from the House Committee on Rules, provided for an amendment in the nature of a substitute to be considered as adopted and for consideration of H.R. 1968, as amended. H.Res. 211 was adopted, 216-214, and H.R. 1968 was subsequently passed by the House, 217-213. In the Senate, a motion to proceed to consideration of H.R. 1968 was agreed to by unanimous consent on March 14. Cloture on the measure was subsequently invoked in the Senate the same day by a vote of 62-38, and the bill was passed, 54-46. The measure was signed into law the following day (P.L. 119-4).

According to the Congressional Budget Office's cost estimate for H.R. 1968, the levels of budget authority in the bill included an annualized base defense level of $892.5 billion and a base nondefense level of $708.0 billion for a total of $1,600.5 billion.²¹ These levels were therefore in compliance with the FRA defense and nondefense discretionary spending limits for FY2025.

Supplemental Appropriations

Supplemental appropriations acts provide budget authority in addition to any amounts provided by regular or continuing appropriations measures. These measures are usually developed in response to urgent and unanticipated needs, such as natural disasters and urgent military operations.

Like regular appropriations acts, these supplemental appropriations acts provide definite amounts of budget authority for specific purposes. However, this budget authority is usually available for obligation immediately upon enactment and remains available until it is expended.

Congress enacted two supplemental appropriations bills for FY2024: the FY2024 National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act (H.R. 815, 118^th Congress, enacted April 24, 2024) and the Veterans Benefits Continuity and Accountability Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024 (H.R. 9468, 118^th Congress, enacted September 20, 2024). Congress included supplemental funding for FY2025 in the same legislation as the second CR (P.L. 118-158) as Division B: the Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2025.

Footnotes