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A CBO Report: Final Sequestration Report for Fiscal Year 2003 [i] (December 2002)

handle is hein.congrec/cbo0730 and id is 1 raw text is: A CBO REPORT Final Sequestration Report for Fiscal Year 2003 December 2002 A Report to the Congress and the Office of Management and Budget Under the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is required to issue a final sequestration report at the end of each session of Congress. However, the major enforcement procedures that have governed federal budgeting for more than a decade--the annual limits on appropriations (discretionary spending) and the pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) requirement for new legislation that affects mandatory spending or revenues--expired on September 30, 2002. This report provides estimates of discretionary spending and the limits on that spending for 2002 and 2003 and updates the PAYGO scorecard for legislation enacted through September 30, 2002. CBO estimates that a sequestration (cancellation of budgetary resources) will not be required for either discretionary or mandatory spending in fiscal year 2003. The Deficit Control Act contained two mechanisms to govern federal spending, both enforced through sequestration. Section 251 set limits on the spending provided through the annual appropriation process. If such spending exceeded the limits, the act prescribed a sequestration to eliminate the excess. Section 252 established a PAYGO scorecard to record the projected five-year budgetary effects of each piece of legislation that affected mandatory spending or revenues. If such legislation was estimated to result in a net increase in the deficit or decrease in the surplus, the act called for reductions in mandatory programs (that are not otherwise exempt) sufficient to offset that change. Legislation enacted after September 30 is no longer recorded on the scorecard, but a PAYGO sequestration could have occurred as a result of legislation enacted before that date. The limits on discretionary spending applied to four categories for 2002: overall discretionary, highway, mass transit, and conservation (see Table 1). CBO and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimate that such spending is within the caps. Limits for the two transportation categories are set through 2003, and caps for conservation spending are set through 2006 (see Table.2). However, with the expiration of section 251, those limits are moot. Table 1.

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