Compendium of Budget Accounts

Each year, the President submits a budget to Congress. The President's budget is not a single object or device but an analysis and compilation of separate presentations of hundreds of budget accounts, covering all fiscal activities of the federal government, including "off-budget" accounts, such as the Social Security trust funds and the Postal Service fund. The budget comprises a wealth of information in a daunting array of schedules, tables, graphs, and narrative summaries. The comprehensiveness of the President's budget is its principal strength, but its sheer size and complexity can be overwhelming for many readers. For example, the President's fiscal year 1997 budget spanned six volumes and contained more than 2,100 pages. GAO developed this compendium of accounts to give readers a convenient way to sort through the fiscal structure of the federal government and to determine the level of budgetary resources--used, estimated, or requested by fiscal year--for individual accounts.

GAO noted that: (1) the compendium has the same organizational arrangement as the appendix to the Budget of the United States Government, FY 1997; (2) gross obligations are reported for each account, since these figures best describe each budget account's relative size in terms of financial commitments made within a giver FY; (3) codes reflecting the accounts' related budget function or subfunction and cognizant congressional appropriations subcommittees, and authorizing subcommittees where appropriate, are included to enhance the compendium's utility; (4) the standard format for reporting each account includes the account's name, cognizant subcommittee(s), account identification code, function or subfunction code, actual FY 1995 gross obligations, estimated FY 1996 gross obligations, and the FY 1997 budget request; (5) several accounts have been consolidated in the FY 1997 budget proposal because the Office of Management and Budget decided to display financial information rounded to the nearest million dollars rather than the nearest thousand; and (6) listing of zero gross obligations in given fiscal years may reflect newly authorized, second-year, consolidated, or terminated accounts.