H.R. 3746 — Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023
Official title: To provide for a responsible increase to the debt ceiling.
118th Congress · Enrolled (enacted, Public Law) · Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) · reported June 3, 2023 · read the full bill text →
Where the money goes
$66.7B across 3 tracked itemsThis law mostly authorizes, it doesn’t spend. It sets spending authorizations — ceilings Congress must still appropriate separately — rather than handing out cash, so it has almost no appropriations of its own. The pie shows the small appropriated part; the authorizations are disclosed below.
The largest verified line-items. This pie breaks down the biggest spending items in the bill — appropriations and mandatory (direct) spending — by category. Every dollar is quoted from the text; click any slice to read them. It is not necessarily every dollar in the bill (the smallest items may not be listed), and figures that aren’t spending — authorizations, guarantee ceilings, pay-fors, and carve-outs already counted — are deliberately left out and disclosed below.
Authorizations (a ceiling on future spending) — $6520.1B
“There are authorized to be appropriated $X” sets a CAP on what a future appropriations bill may provide — it is permission, not money. Much of a landmark law’s headline figure is this. It is disclosed here, never summed into the pie, because the cash only exists if a later bill actually appropriates it.
- Additional discretionary spending LIMIT for FY2029 (Senate CBA 302(a)(5) enforcement ceiling, not money)$1671.1B
- Additional discretionary spending LIMIT for FY2026 (Senate CBA 302(a)(5) enforcement ceiling, not money)$1622.0B
- Statutory discretionary spending CAP (ceiling, not new money) for the revised security (defense) category, FY2025$895.2B
- Statutory discretionary spending CAP (ceiling, not new money) for the revised security (defense) category, FY2024$886.3B
- Statutory discretionary spending CAP (ceiling, not new money) for the revised nonsecurity category, FY2025$710.7B
- Statutory discretionary spending CAP (ceiling, not new money) for the revised nonsecurity category, FY2024$703.7B
- Not-to-exceed CEILING on FY2025 advance appropriations (House budget-enforcement rule, not money)$28.9B
- Program-integrity CAP ADJUSTMENT: additional new budget authority allowed for continuing disability reviews, FY2025$1.6B
- Program-integrity CAP ADJUSTMENT: additional new budget authority allowed for health care fraud and abuse control, FY2025$630.0M
Revenue & offsets (pay-fors) — $3.1B
Tax changes, rescissions and other provisions that RAISE or save money rather than spend it. Not spending — disclosed so the law’s cost is not overstated by ignoring how it was paid for.
- Rescission of unobligated IRS enforcement/operations balances from the Inflation Reduction Act$1.4B
- Rescission of unobligated balances (CARES Act sec. 2118(a) as added by ARP sec. 9032)$1.0B
- Rescission of unobligated CARES Act balances (Public Law 116-136 sec. 4120)$295.0M
- Rescission of unobligated CARES Act balances (Public Law 116-136 sec. 4027)$200.0M
- Rescission of unobligated American Rescue Plan balances (Public Law 117-2 sec. 3301(a)(2)(A))$150.0M
- Rescission of unobligated DoD Procurement - Defense Production Act Purchases balances (CARES Act)$61.4M
Every dollar, cited
3 spending line-itemsveterans$44.7B · 67%
- Appropriation to the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund for veterans' health care (PACT Act), available Oct 1 2024$24,455,000,000→ Dept. of Veterans Affairs - Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund
“…1, 2023, and shall remain available until September 30, 2028; and (2)$24,455,000,000, which shall become available on October 1,…”
Division C - Appropriation for Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund - Appropriation to the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund for veterans' health care (PACT Act), available Oct 1 2023$20,268,000,000→ Dept. of Veterans Affairs - Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund
“…as authorized by section 324 of title 38, United States Code— (1)$20,268,000,000, which shall become available on October 1,…”
Division C - Appropriation for Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund
commerce & housing credit$22.0B · 33%
- Appropriation to the Dept. of Commerce Nonrecurring Expenses Fund, FY2023 ($11B each for FY2024/FY2025 'Government efficiencies'; PAYGO-exempt)$22,000,000,000→ Dept. of Commerce - Nonrecurring Expenses Fund
“…2023, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, $22,000,000,000, to remain available until expended, of…”
Division C - Appropriation for Department of Commerce Nonrecurring Expenses Fund
How this was built
XML itertext of the enrolled bill joined into faithful text, parsed structurally (division/title/section); every dollar string extracted as an exact substring of that text and re-verified. 18 of 18 sampled figures were re-located as exact strings in the source text. Source: GovInfo enrolled bill text. Full bill text.
H.R. 3746 is a debt-limit / caps-and-rescissions law (bill-type 'olc'), NOT an appropriations act. Its official title is a debt-ceiling increase; Division D suspends the debt limit through Jan 1 2025 (no dollar figure). CLASSIFICATION IS THE WHOLE STORY HERE: (1) The big Division A figures ($886.349B/$703.651B for FY2024, $895.212B/$710.688B for FY2025) are STATUTORY DISCRETIONARY SPENDING CAPS - amendments to BBEDCA sec. 251(c) that set ceilings on FUTURE appropriations, not money this bill provides. They are tagged 'authorization' (the taxonomy's 'ceiling on future appropriations' bucket) and are the primary CBO-scored deficit reducer RELATIVE TO BASELINE - the $886B is a ceiling, not a saving and not a spend. The FY2026-2029 figures ($1.62T-$1.67T) are Senate/CBA 302(a)(5) ENFORCEMENT limits only. The program-integrity items ($1.63B CDR, $630M HCFAC) and the $28.852B advance-appropriations figure are likewise ceilings/allowances, not appropriations. (2) The ONLY genuine new budget authority the Act PROVIDES is mandatory/PAYGO-exempt and made directly in the law text with 'there are/is appropriated ... out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated': the VA Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund ($20.268B FY2024 + $24.455B FY2025) and the Commerce Nonrecurring Expenses Fund ($22B, split $11B/$11B). These are tagged 'direct_spending' (mandatory budget authority created outside the annual appropriations process), so the pie of pure 'appropriation' (discretionary) is $0 - the honest result for this bill. (3) Division B rescissions are 'revenue_or_offset' (pay-fors that SAVE money). CRITICAL READING NOTE: most Sec. 2 rescissions are phrased 'all unobligated balances ... WITH THE EXCEPTION OF $X' - the $X is the amount RETAINED, NOT the amount rescinded; the rescinded total is not a stated figure. Only Secs. 10, 11, 14, 24, 40, and 251 state a concrete RESCINDED dollar. The 'with the exception of $X' carve-outs (amounts RETAINED, i.e. NOT rescinded) were REMOVED by the adversarial verifier: a retained balance is neither spending nor a saving/offset, and tagging it 'revenue_or_offset' would have wrongly inflated the disclosed pay-fors. (4) spending_source='mixed': the concrete cap and rescission dollars are in the bill text; the headline ~$1.5T 10-year deficit reduction lives in the CBO cost estimate for H.R. 3746 (cbo.gov), not as a line in the operative text. The IRS rescission is only the $1,389,525,000 first tranche in the text; the widely-reported additional $20B IRS cut came via a separate FY2024 side agreement, not this enrolled text.