LegiStorm

Summary:

At its most basic level of organization, the Treasury Department is a collection of departmental offices and operating bureaus. The bureaus as a whole account for 95% of Treasury’s budget and workforce. Most bureaus and offices are funded through annual appropriations. Treasury appropriations were distributed among 10 accounts in FY2015: (1) Departmental Offices (DO), (2) Departmentwide Systems and Capital Investments Program (DSCIP), (3) Office of Inspector General (OIG), (4) Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), (5) Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), (6) Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), (7) Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), (8) Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (ATTB), (9) Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFIF), and (10) the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The President’s budget request for FY2016 included $13.456 billion in appropriations for the Treasury Department, including a rescission of $875 million for the Treasury Forfeiture Fund (TFF). Of the requested amount, $12.931 billion would go to the IRS; $364 million to the BFS; $332 million to DO; $233.5 million to CDFIF; $167 million to TIGTA; $113 million to FinCEN; $101 million to ATTB; $41 million to SIGTARP; $35 million to OIG; and $11 million to DSCIP. In early July 2015, the House Appropriations Committee reported a bill (H.R. 2995) that provided appropriations for the Treasury Department and several other agencies in FY2016. Under the measure, Treasury would have received $10.758 billion in appropriations, including a rescission of $721 million from the TFF; this amount was $764 million less than the amount enacted for FY2015 and $2.698 billion less than the budget request. Later the same month, the Senate Appropriations Committee also reported a bill (S. 1910) to fund Treasury and the same other agencies in FY2016. Under the measure, Treasury would have received $11.139 billion in appropriations, including a rescission of $700 million from the TFF. This amount was $383 million less than the amount enacted for FY2015 and $2.317 billion less than the budget request. The House and Senate agreed in mid-December 2015 on an omnibus appropriations measure (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, P.L. 114-113) for FY2016 that included funding for the Treasury Department. Under the act, Treasury received $11.942 billion in appropriations, or $420 million more than the amount enacted for FY2015 but $1.514 billion less than the budget request. The three FY2016 budget proposals for Treasury raised several issues for Congress. One concerned the status of funding for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI): H.R. 2995 as reported would have created a separate appropriations account for the TFF, whereas both the Administration’s budget request and S. 1910 as reported proposed combining funding for the Office with overall DO funding. Another issue was the future status of two CDFIF programs: the Healthy Food Initiative and the Bank Enterprise Award Program. The budget request included funding for the former but no funding for the latter, but S. 1910 and H.R. 2995 would have funded the latter without funding the former. Proposed funding for the IRS in FY2016 raised three additional issues: (1) the potential impact of the three proposals on taxpayer service and tax law enforcement, (2) the advantages and disadvantages of using discretionary funding cap adjustments under the Balanced Budget Act of 2011 to increase funding for IRS enforcement activities, and (3) the implications of the current budget scoring convention of disregarding the net revenue effect of agency administrative programs for the size of the IRS budget.