Skip Navigation

This paper is the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO's) annual review of its activities under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995. The report covers legislation before the Congress in 2001 that would impose federal mandates on other levels of government or on the private sector.

The paper was prepared by Theresa Gullo, chief of the State and Local Government Cost Estimates Unit of CBO's Budget Analysis Division, under the supervision of Robert Sunshine, and by Patrice Gordon, chief of the Private-Sector Mandates Unit of CBO's Microeconomic and Financial Studies Division, under the supervision of Roger Hitchner. The CBO mandate statements referred to in this report were prepared by the staff members listed in the appendix as well as by former CBO analyst Victoria Heid Hall.

Christian Spoor edited the paper, and Leah Mazade proofread it. Rae Wiseman produced the tables, with assistance from Ernestine McNeil. Kathryn Winstead produced the cover, and Annette Kalicki prepared the electronic versions of the paper for CBO's Web site.
 

Dan L. Crippen
Director
June 2002
 
 

Introduction

Mandate Statements Prepared in 2001

Mandates Enacted into Law in 2001

• Intergovernmental Mandates
• Private-Sector Mandates

Mandate Statements Prepared Since UMRA Went into Effect

Appendix: Primary Contributors to CBO's Analyses of Mandates
 

Tables
1.	Number of CBO Mandate Statements for Bills, Proposed Amendments, and Conference Reports in 2001
2.	Bills Reviewed by CBO in 2001 That Contained Intergovernmental Mandates
3.	Bills Reviewed by CBO in 2001 That Contained Private-Sector Mandates
4.	Status of Mandates Identified by CBO in 2001 That Would Exceed the Statutory Thresholds
5.	Laws Enacted in 2001 That Contained Intergovernmental Mandates
6.	Number of CBO Mandate Statements for Bills, Proposed Amendments, and Conference Reports, 1996 to 2001

 

Introduction

Title I of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA) requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to estimate the costs of federal legislative provisions that would impose requirements on state, local, or tribal governments or on the private sector. CBO must analyze all public bills that are considered by authorizing committees--and, on request, other legislative proposals--for the presence of such federal mandates. The agency must then provide a detailed cost estimate for each bill that contains a mandate whose costs would total $50 million or more to other levels of government in any one year or $100 million or more to the private sector in any one year. (Those thresholds are in 1996 dollars and are adjusted annually for inflation. In 2001, they were $56 million for intergovernmental mandates and $113 million for private-sector mandates.)

This report reviews CBO's activities under title I of UMRA during calendar year 2001--the sixth year that CBO has provided information about federal mandates to the Congress.⁽¹⁾ The report lists the bills examined by CBO last year that were found to contain mandates with costs above the relevant thresholds. It also notes which of those mandates were enacted into law.
 

Mandate Statements Prepared in 2001

Last year, CBO analyzed 389 bills, amendments, and other legislative proposals for the presence of federal mandates and transmitted official statements about them to the Congress (see Table 1). As in the previous five years, most of that legislation did not contain federal mandates as defined by UMRA. Of the 389 bills and other legislative proposals, 50 (13 percent) contained intergovernmental mandates, and 66 (17 percent) contained private-sector mandates. (Table 2 and Table 3 list those bills and their mandates.)
 

Most of the legislation with mandates would not have imposed costs exceeding the thresholds set by UMRA. Only four (8 percent) of the bills that contained intergovernmental mandates would have cost state, local, and tribal governments as a whole $56 million or more in any year, by CBO's estimate. Some 18 (27 percent) of the bills with private-sector mandates would have imposed costs of more than $113 million a year.

About half of the intergovernmental mandates that CBO identified in 2001 were explicit preemptions of state or local authority.⁽²⁾ In most of those cases, the estimated costs to comply with the preemptions were not significant.
 

Mandates Enacted into Law in 2001

Of the legislative proposals that the Congress considered last year, no intergovernmental mandates and few private-sector mandates with costs over the UMRA thresholds became law.

Intergovernmental Mandates

Because CBO prepares mandate statements on every public bill reported by a House or Senate authorizing committee, and because both bodies may consider the same basic mandate in more than one piece of legislation, the number of separate mandates included in legislation is smaller than the number of statements that CBO prepared. The four statements that CBO provided in 2001 for legislation containing intergovernmental mandates above the cost threshold actually identified only two different mandates: an increase in the minimum wage and requirements on state and local governments to comply with a variety of patient-protection standards in the health plans they offer their employees (see Table 4). Neither of those mandates had been enacted into law by the end of May 2002.
 

Of the 108 public laws that were enacted in 2001, only 12 contained intergovernmental mandates as defined by UMRA (see Table 5). By CBO's estimate, none of those mandates will impose annual costs on state, local, or tribal governments that exceed the threshold. Five of the 12 laws contained intergovernmental mandates that were never reviewed by CBO, either because the mandates were added after CBO's review or because the bill containing the mandates was never considered by an authorizing committee.
 

Private-Sector Mandates

The 18 statements that CBO provided for legislation containing private-sector mandates above the cost threshold contained 13 separate mandates (see Table 4). Five of those mandates were enacted: a fee imposed on passengers to fund aviation-security programs, a ban on soft-money collections by national political parties, new minimum prices for fluid milk in different regions of the country, a requirement that group health plans and issuers of health insurance cover mental health and medical benefits equally, and tax provisions imposed to offset the costs of other provisions in the Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002. Two other mandates with costs exceeding the threshold had a conference pending or were already in conference committee at the end of May 2002: new procedures for administering bankruptcy estates and new patient-protection requirements for health insurance.
 

Mandate Statements Prepared Since UMRA Went into Effect

CBO has provided mandate statements for nearly all of the public bills reported by authorizing committees since UMRA took effect in 1996. Most of that legislation did not contain federal mandates as UMRA defines them. Of the more than 3,300 bills and other legislative proposals that CBO reviewed from 1996 through 2001, 12 percent contained intergovernmental mandates and 15 percent contained private-sector mandates (see Table 6).
 

Most of those mandates would not have cost the affected parties more than the thresholds set in UMRA. Only 36 (about 9 percent) of the bills with intergovernmental mandates--or 1 percent of the bills that CBO reviewed during the 1996-2001 period--had costs exceeding the threshold in any one year, by CBO's estimate. Some 118 (24 percent) of the bills with private-sector mandates--or about 4 percent of the bills that CBO reviewed in those six years--would have imposed costs on the private sector above the threshold in any year.
 

Appendix: Primary Contributors to CBO's Analyses of Mandates

The following Congressional Budget Office analysts prepare the mandate statements that CBO produces for bills and other legislative proposals:
 

Intergovernmental Mandates
Budget Analysis Division
Theresa Gullo	Chief, state and local government cost estimates
Elyse Goldman	Environment, energy, education
Leo Lex	Health, social services, income security
Marjorie Miller	Natural resources, agriculture
Angela Seitz	Administration of justice, commerce
Susan Sieg Tompkins	Banking, housing, general government, transportation
Ernestine McNeil	Secretarial support
Private-Sector Mandates
Microeconomic and Financial Studies Division
Patrice Gordon	Coordinator, natural resources and commerce
Lauren Marks	Energy, natural resources, international affairs
Cecil McPherson III	Small business, Indian affairs
Paige Piper/Bach	Governmental affairs, justice
Jean Talarico	Agriculture, commerce, transportation
Rae Roy	Secretarial support
Health and Human Resources Division
Bruce Vavrichek	Coordinator, health and human resources
Nabeel Alsalam	Education, labor
James Baumgardner	Health
Jennifer Bowman	Health
Stuart Hagen	Health
Karuna Patel	Labor, health
Rekha Ramesh	Health
Ralph Smith	Labor, income security
Judith Wagner	Health
Ronald Moore	Secretarial support
National Security Division
R. William Thomas	Coordinator, national security
Deborah Clay-Mendez	Defense issues
Sally Sagraves Maxwell	Veterans' health
Cynthia Cleveland	Secretarial support
Tax Analysis Division
Mark Booth	Coordinator, tax analysis
Erin Whitaker	Revenues
Office of the General Counsel
Robert Murphy	General Counsel
Jennifer Smith	Deputy General Counsel

1. For more details about UMRA's requirements and a review of CBO's activities under title I of the law during its first five years, see Congressional Budget Office,CBO's Activities Under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act, 1996-2000 (May 2001).

2. For more information about preemptions, see Congressional Budget Office, Preemptions in Federal Legislation in the 106th Congress (June 2001).