In October 2022, three experts in budget and appropriations law led a training for congressional staff on how to read apportionments, navigate and use OMB’s website, and find the apportionments associated with a particular appropriation or Treasury account. 

You can find a recording of their presentation here and below:

And you can find their slide deck here. (In light of the animations on the slides, it’s best to view them in “Slideshow” mode in Google Slides or to download them and view them as a slideshow in Microsoft PowerPoint.)

The following experts led the training:

• Lester Cash recently retired after serving as the deputy director of the Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) Office of Budget for 15 years. He was responsible for HHS’s apportionment requests from 2009 to 2021. Mr. Cash served in HHS’s Office of Budget for 25 years, at OMB for 10 years, and at the Census Bureau for 3 years.
• Ed Martin worked for over 30 years on the budget execution of HHS programs. He spent an additional 10 years as an independent contractor developing and providing training on budget execution and appropriations law for HHS. Mr. Martin retired in 2018.
• Charlotte (Charlie) McKiver is an Assistant General Counsel in GAO’s Appropriations Law Group. Before joining GAO, she served as an Assistant General Counsel in OMB’s Office of General Counsel and as a fiscal law analyst in HHS’s Office of Budget.

The training was sponsored by Protect Democracy, American Action Forum, Demand Progress, FreedomWorks, National Taxpayers Union, Project on Government Oversight, R Street Institute, and Taxpayers for Common Sense.   

In 2005, the Government Accountability Office published A Glossary of Terms Used in the Federal Budget Process. Please consult the Glossary for a comprehensive list of key terms and definitions in budget and appropriations law. A handful of terms and definitions relevant to apportionments are highlighted below. These definitions are taken from the Glossary, OMB Circular No. A-11, the Treasury Department’s FAST Book, and the Oct. 13 apportionment training. Each entry is hyperlinked to the source providing the definition. 

Antideficiency Act – the federal law that: 

• prohibits the making of expenditures or the incurring of obligations in advance of an appropriation;
• prohibits the incurring of obligations or the making of expenditures in excess of amounts available in appropriation or fund accounts unless specifically authorized by law (31 U.S.C. § 1341(a));
• requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), via delegation from the President, to apportion appropriated funds and other budgetary resources for all executive branch agencies (31 U.S.C. § 1512);
• requires a system of administrative controls within each agency (see 31 U.S.C. § 1514 for the administrative divisions established);
• prohibits incurring any obligation or making any expenditure in excess of an apportionment or reapportionment or in excess of other subdivisions established pursuant to sections 1513 and 1514 of title 31 of the United States Code (31 U.S.C. § 1517); and
• specifies penalties for deficiencies. 

Apportionment –  a legally binding plan approved by OMB that makes budgetary resources available to a federal agency. Apportionments set limits—beyond those in appropriations and authorization legislation—on how and when an agency may spend funds, what an agency may spend funds on, and any conditions an agency must meet before spending funds. 

• Reapportionment – a revision of a previous apportionment of budgetary resources for an appropriation or fund account. OMB reapportions just as it apportions. Agencies usually submit requests for reapportionment to OMB as soon as a change becomes necessary due to changes in amounts available, program requirements, or cost factors.

Appropriation – a provision of law authorizing the expenditure of funds for a given purpose. 

Appropriation Account – The basic unit of an appropriation generally reflecting each unnumbered paragraph in an appropriation act. 

A-11 (OMB Circular No. A-11) – the OMB manual that offers detailed guidance to federal agencies on budget preparation, submission, and execution. 

Budgetary Resources – amounts available to enter into new obligations and liquidate them. Budgetary resources are made up of unobligated balances provided in previous years and new budget authority.

New Budget Authority – New budget authority is made up of:

• Appropriations
• Borrowing authority – a type of budget authority that permits obligations and outlays to be financed by borrowing.
• Contract authority – a type of budget authority that permits you to incur obligations in advance of an appropriation, offsetting collections, or receipts to make outlays to liquidate the obligations.
• Spending authority from offsetting collections – collections authorized by law to be credited to appropriation or fund expenditure accounts. 

Deferral of Budget Authority – temporary withholding or delaying of the obligation or expenditure of budget authority or any other type of executive action, which effectively precludes the obligation or expenditure of budget authority. A deferral is one type of impoundment. Under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (2 U.S.C. § 684), budget authority may only be deferred to provide for contingencies, to achieve savings or greater efficiency in the operations of the government, or as otherwise specifically provided by law. Budget authority may not be deferred for policy or any other reason. 

The Federal Account Symbols and Titles (FAST) Book – the Treasury Department manual listing appropriation and other fund account symbols and titles. Identifying the Treasury Appropriation Fund Symbol (or TAFS)—a numerical identifier—associated with an appropriation account is the first step in the process of finding the corresponding apportionment. On OMB’s apportionment website, the TAFS is an essential component of the file name identifying an apportionment.  

Obligation – a definite commitment that creates a legal liability of the government for the payment of goods and services ordered or received, or a legal duty on the part of the United States that could mature into a legal liability by virtue of actions on the part of the other party beyond the control of the United States. Payment may be made immediately or in the future. An agency incurs an obligation, for example, when it places an order, signs a contract, awards a grant, purchases a service, or takes other actions that require the government to make payments to the public or from one government account to another. 

Outlay – the issuance of checks, disbursement of cash, or electronic transfer of funds made to liquidate a federal obligation. Outlays also occur when interest on the Treasury debt held by the public accrues and when the government issues bonds, notes, debentures, monetary credits, or other cash-equivalent instruments in order to liquidate obligations. 

Reprogramming – shifting funds within an appropriation or fund account to use them for purposes other than those contemplated at the time of appropriation; it is the shifting of funds from one object class to another within an appropriation or from one program activity to another. While a transfer of funds involves shifting funds from one account to another, reprogramming involves shifting funds within an account. 

Rescission – Legislation enacted by Congress that cancels the availability of budget authority previously enacted before the authority would otherwise expire. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (2 U.S.C. § 683) provides for the President to propose rescissions whenever the President determines that all or part of any budget authority will not be needed to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which the authority was provided. Rescissions of budget authority may be proposed for fiscal policy or other reasons. All funds proposed for rescission must be reported to Congress in a special message. 

SF (Standard Form) 132 – the standard apportionment form. 

SF133 – the report on budget execution and budgetary resources. SF133 reports can be accessed here.

Treasury Appropriation Fund Symbol (TAFS) – the numerical identifier associated with an appropriation account. A TAFS has three elements: a three-digit federal agency ID, a four-digit appropriation account ID, and an availability code. An availability code specifies whether the appropriation is available for one year, multiple years, or has no time limit, known as a “no-year” account. 

• For example, the TAFS for the Health Care Systems appropriation account is 075 0357. “075” identifies the agency—in this case, the Department of Health and Human Services. “0357” identifies Health Care Systems as an account in the Health Resources and Services Administration. 
• On OMB’s apportionment website, one sees several entries for account 0357 (the availability code is bolded): 
  • An annual account (075-2022-2022-0357)
  • A multi-year account (075-2020-2022-0357)
  • A no-year account (075-X-0357)

To use OMB’s public apportionment website, you must know how to find the apportionment associated with a particular appropriation or Treasury account. For a step-by-step guide to finding the right apportionment, consult slides 16-30 from the Oct. 13 apportionment training presentation (which feature relevant screenshots and other visual aids) or follow the identical written guidance below. 

• Apportionments are done at the account level. Thus, to find the apportionment(s) you’re looking for, begin by identifying the Treasury Appropriation Fund Symbol (or TAFS) associated with the relevant appropriation account. 

• Suppose we want to find the apportionments associated with the “Health Care Systems” appropriation in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022. (Click the hyperlinked text to follow along.) That appropriation is for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

• Read the appropriations language closely: “For carrying out titles III and XII of the PHS Act with respect to health care systems, and the Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005, $133,093,000, of which $122,000 shall be available until expended for facilities-related expenses of the National Hansen’s Disease Program.”

• The “Health Care Systems” appropriation is an unnumbered paragraph heading in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022. It denotes an account set up in the Treasury called “Health Care Systems.” To find the TAFS associated with the “Health Care Systems Account,” consult the Treasury Department’s Federal Account Symbols and Titles (FAST) Book.

• Search for the “Health Care Systems” account. This takes us to a line in the FAST Book (click the link to follow along) with a numerical identifier code: 075 0357. “075” identifies HHS as the agency. “0357” identifies Health Care Systems as an account in the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

• Now that we have the TAFS 075 0357, go to OMB’s public apportionment website: https://apportionment-public.max.gov/. 

• Select the appropriate fiscal year. In this case, it is Fiscal Year 2022. 

• Select the appropriate department. In this case, it is HHS.

• Select “Excel” as the file format you would like to peruse. This will bring you to a dropdown list of numerous apportionments. Note the components of an apportionment file name (e.g. FY2022_Agency=HHS_Bureau=HRSA_TAFS=075-2020-2022-0357_Iteration=1_2021-08-25-18.17.xlsx):
  1. Fiscal year (an apportionment lasts only one year regardless of the period of availability)
  2. Federal agency and bureau
  3. TAFS
  4. Iteration
  5. Approval date and time

• Search (Control+F or Command+F) for the four-digit account ID part of the TAFS. In this case, that is 0357. That search will result in four hits:
  1. A multi-year account (075-2020-2022-0357)
  2. Two no-year accounts (075-X-0357); iterations 1 and 2
  3. An annual account (75-2022-2022-0357)

• Examine the apportionments you have found that are associated with the appropriation account relevant to your work.

Congress created the apportionment power in the Antideficiency Act to ensure federal agencies spend within the limits of the law. Authorizing an obligation or expenditure in excess of the apportioned amount is a violation of the Antideficiency Act and may result in administrative or criminal penalties. The Antideficiency Act sections relevant to apportionments are copied below and can be found here.

31 U.S.C. § 1511: What is apportioned?

31 U.S.C. § 1512: How should amounts be apportioned?

31 U.S.C. § 1513: Who controls apportionments? When must apportionments be approved?

31 U.S.C. § 1514: What are the requirements for a funds control system?

31 U.S.C. § 1515: When can deficiency apportionments be requested? When can they be approved?

31 U.S.C. § 1516: Which appropriations are exempt from apportionment?

31 U.S.C. § 1517: What happens if an agency obligates or expends in excess of an apportionment?

31 U.S.C. § 1518: What are the administrative penalties for exceeding an apportionment or administrative subdivision of funds?

31 U.S.C. § 1519: What are the criminal penalties for exceeding an apportionment or administrative subdivision of funds?

OMB Circular No. A-11 is the manual behind the federal budget, offering guidance to agencies on budget preparation, submission, and execution. Sections 120, 123, 124 of A-11 concern apportionments. 

• Section 120 covers the apportionment process.
• Section 123 covers apportionments under continuing resolutions.
• Section 124 covers agency operations in the absence of appropriations. 
• Appendix F covers the format of the Standard Form (SF) 132 (the apportionment form) and SF 133 (the report on budget execution and budgetary resources).

OMB updates the Circular annually, and one may find the most up-to-date version here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-for-agencies/circulars/. 

OMB publicly posts apportionments here: https://apportionment-public.max.gov/. 

OMB also publishes SF133 reports—that is, reports on budget execution and budgetary resources—here.

While working as an independent contractor for the Department of Health and Human Services after a lengthy career in government service, Ed Martin created an array of videos explaining the ins and outs of budget execution and appropriations law. These videos provide an accessible and detailed overview of key topics in those areas. We highlight and have embedded some of these videos below, but the full video library can be accessed here. Please note that, since Mr. Martin retired in 2018, the content of some of the videos may be out of date. 

Understanding Apportionments

• Module 1—defines an apportionment, explains why we apportion, and lays out the basic rules of apportionment. 
• Module 2—covers the apportionment form, the Standard Form (SF) 132. 
• Module 3—examines the rest of the apportionment and the circumstances in which an apportionment is not necessary. 

Reading the SF133—breaks down the information provided on the SF 133, the report on budget execution and budgetary resources. Among other things, the SF 133 allows one to track the status of funds that have been apportioned—to see how an agency obligates funds once it is authorized by OMB to do so. 

Reading Appropriations Language 

• Module 1—covers reading appropriations language in annual and supplemental appropriations. 
• Module 2—covers reading appropriations language in continuing appropriations (CRs). 
• Module 3—covers reading appropriations language in permanent appropriations. 

The Antideficiency Act: What You Need to Know—covers the content and history of the Antideficiency Act and why it is important.