Description:
H.R. 2345 would require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to coordinate with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) within the Department of Health and Human Services to study and report on the feasibility of designating a N11 dialing code as a national suicide prevention and mental health crises hotline system. Under the bill, VA and SAMHSA would each be required to complete a separate study and analysis that would be used by the FCC to develop a comprehensive study and report that includes information from those two studies. The FCC would be required to provide additional analysis and recommendations on the logistics and costs to develop such a dialing code if the other agencies recommend that a dialing code be used. Using information from the affected agencies, CBO estimates that implementing the provisions of H.R. 2345 would cost less than $500,000 over the 2019-2023 period for the agencies to coordinate and develop the analyses and reports required under the bill; that spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds. Enacting H.R. 2345 would not affect direct spending or revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply. CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 2345 would not increase net direct spending or on-budget deficits in any of the four consecutive 10-year periods beginning in 2029. H.R. 2345 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. On November 15, 2017, CBO transmitted a cost estimate for S. 1015, the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act of 2017, as passed by the Senate on November 7, 2017. The two pieces of legislation are similar and CBO’s estimates of their budgetary effects are the same. The term N11 dialing code refers to an abbreviated dialing code consisting of three digits, of which the first may be any digit other than one or zero and each of the last two digits be one.
