Description:
S. 256 would authorize the appropriation of $13 million for each year from 2020 through 2024 for a grant program to preserve and maintain Native American languages. The authority to make those grants expired at the end of 2012. However, the Department of Health and Human Services has continued to allocate funds for these grants. In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, that allocation was about $10 million. The bill would establish a period of availability of up to five years for those grants and would allow grant recipients to serve fewer children per grant than previously. For this estimate, CBO assumes that S. 256 will be enacted before the beginning of fiscal year 2020, and that the authorized amounts will be appropriated each year. Estimated outlays are based on historical spending patterns. CBO estimates that implementing the bill would cost $51 million over 2020 through 2024 and $14 million after 2024. The costs of the legislation, detailed in Table 1, fall within budget function 500 (education, training, employment, and social services).
