Description:
The Heroes Act is appropriation legislation, but subsection 10607(d) and section 11009 of division A specify requirements for the budgetary treatment of subsection 10607(d) and for divisions B through T. Consistent with those requirements, and at the direction of the House Committee on the Budget, subsection 10607(d) and divisions B through T are considered authorizing legislation rather than appropriation legislation and thus their estimated direct spending and revenue effects are subject to pay-as-you-go procedures. However, the legislation also would require the estimated budgetary effects stemming from those provisions to be excluded from pay-as-you-go scorecards maintained by the U.S. Senate and the Office of Management and Budget. The act contains intergovernmental and private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA). CBO estimates that the costs of mandates on private entities would exceed the private-sector threshold established in UMRA, and the costs of mandates on state, local, and tribal governments would fall below the threshold for intergovernmental mandates (those thresholds are $168 million and $84 million, respectively, adjusted annually for inflation). Almost all discretionary spending resulting from division A would be designated as emergency spending in keeping with section 251 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. The limits on discretionary budget authority established by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (Public Law 112-25), as amended, would be adjusted to accommodate such spending. CBO anticipates that three sections—10403, 10607, and 10612—would affect regular discretionary spending (that is, spending that is subject to statutory limits under the Budget Control Act). CBO estimates that section 10403 would change the rate at which the Federal Emergency Management Agency would spend existing balances of regular funding, thus increasing outlays by $120 million in 2020 and by $80 million in 2021, and reducing them by $200 million in 2022. Sections 10607 and 10612 would rescind unobligated balances of regular budget authority for the National Institutes of Health and the Corporation for National and Community Service in 2020 and appropriate equivalent amounts in 2021. CBO estimates that those sections would reduce regular budget authority by $3.5 billion in 2020, increase emergency-designated budget authority by the same amount in 2021, and have no effect on outlays. Consistent with subsection 10607(d) and section 11009 of division A, and at the direction of the House Committee on the Budget, subsection 10607(d) and divisions B through T are considered authorizing legislation rather than appropriation legislation and thus their estimated direct spending and revenue effects are subject to pay-as-you-go procedures. However, the legislation also would require the estimated budgetary effects stemming from those provisions to be excluded from pay-as-you-go scorecards maintained by the U.S. Senate and the Office of Management and Budget. Consistent with subsection 10607(d) and section 11009 of division A, and at the direction of the House Committee on the Budget, subsection 10607(d) and divisions B through T are considered authorizing legislation rather than appropriation legislation and thus their estimated direct spending and revenue effects are subject to pay-as-you-go procedures. However, the legislation also would require the estimated budgetary effects stemming from those provisions to be excluded from pay-as-you-go scorecards maintained by the U.S. Senate and the Office of Management and Budget.
