Description:
As reported by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 18, 2014
S. 2828 would authorize the appropriation of $560 million over the 2015-2017 period to provide various forms of assistance to Ukraine and the surrounding region. In addition, CBO estimates that implementing the bill would increase administrative costs at the Department of State and the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Department of the Treasury requiring additional appropriations of $20 million over the next five years. In total, CBO estimates that implementing S. 2828 would cost $545 million over the 2015-2019 period, assuming appropriation of the specified and estimated amounts.
S. 2828 also would impose sanctions affecting the defense and energy sectors of the Russian Federation and foreign financial institutions. CBO estimates that enacting those sanctions would increase revenues from collections of civil and criminal penalties and decrease revenues from visa fees. In addition, CBO estimates that enacting the bill would increase direct spending by $10 million over the 2015-2024 period by reducing future offsetting receipts from federal oil and gas leasing activities; direct spending from criminal penalties also would increase (such penalties are deposited in the Crime Victims Fund, and spent in subsequent years). In total, CBO estimates that the net increase in revenues would exceed the direct spending effects over the 2015-2024 period, but has no basis for providing a more specific estimate, given the great uncertainty of how much might be collected in sanction penalties. Because enacting the legislation would affect direct spending and revenues, pay-as-you-go procedures apply.
S. 2828 contains no intergovernmental mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA). The bill would impose private-sector mandates, as defined in UMRA, on entities involved in certain transactions or investments with companies that may be sanctioned under the bill. The total value of the business transactions and investments that could be affected by the sanctions in the bill amounts to billions of dollars. Thus, should the sanctions be applied to entities involved in those transactions or investments, the aggregate cost of the mandates in the bill would well exceed the annual threshold established in UMRA for private-sector mandates ($152 million in 2014, adjusted annually for inflation), CBO estimates.
