The Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) appropriations bill includes funding for a wide variety of federal government functions and government-wide direction on usage of funds.¹ The bill funds:

• the Department of the Treasury (Title I),²
• the Executive Office of the President (Title II),
• the judiciary (Title III),³
• the District of Columbia (Title IV),⁴ and
• more than two dozen independent agencies (Title V).

Title VI of the bill typically funds mandatory retirement accounts for the entire government and contains additional general provisions applying to the funding provided to agencies through the FSGG bill. Title VII typically contains general provisions that apply government-wide.

The House and Senate FSGG bills fund the same agencies, with one exception: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is funded through the Agriculture appropriations bill in the House and the FSGG bill in the Senate. Where the CFTC is funded upon enactment typically depends on which chamber originated the law, which alternates annually. Thus, the enacted amounts for the CFTC have historically been in the Agriculture appropriations bill one year and the FSGG appropriations bill the following year. This structure has existed in its current form since the 2007 reorganization of the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations.

Although financial services are a major focus of the FSGG appropriations bill, the bill does not include funding for many financial regulatory agencies, which are instead funded outside of the appropriations process. However, it is not uncommon for legislative provisions addressing various financial regulatory issues to be included in the bill.

Administration and Congressional Action

President Biden submitted his full FY2024 budget request on March 9, 2023. The request included a total of $54.2 billion for agencies funded through the FSGG appropriations bill, including a net total of $295 million for the CFTC.⁵

The House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2024 (H.R. 4664), was marked up in subcommittee on June 22, 2023; marked up in full committee on July 13, 2023; and reported (H.Rept. 118-145) on July 17, 2023. Approximate total FY2024 funding in the reported bill was $33.6 billion. Another $345 million for the CFTC was included in the Agriculture appropriations bill (H.R. 4368; H.Rept. 118-124). The combined total of $34.0 billion was approximately $20.2 billion less than the President's FY2024 request. The largest amount of this difference is due to over $10 billion in rescissions of multiyear IRS funding previously provided in P.L. 117-169.

The Senate Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2024 (S. 2309), was marked up in subcommittee on July 11, 2023, and marked up in full committee and reported (S.Rept. 118-61) on July 13, 2023. Approximate total FY2024 funding in the reported bill was $39.1 billion, including $365 million for the CFTC. The total was approximately $15 billion less than the President's FY2024 request, with the largest amount of this difference due to over $10 billion in rescissions of directly appropriated IRS funding previously provided in P.L. 117-169.

No full-year FY2024 appropriations measure was enacted prior to the end of September 2023. On September 30, 2023, Congress passed, and the President signed, the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2024 (P.L. 118-15), providing continuing appropriations through November 17, 2023, largely based on FY2023 levels.⁶ Additional CRs were enacted (P.L. 118-22, P.L. 118-35, and P.L. 118-40), ultimately extending funding through March 22, 2024.

Final full-year appropriations were enacted in two consolidated measures, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (P.L. 118-42), enacted March 9, 2024, and the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (P.L. 118-47), enacted March 23, 2024.⁷ FSGG appropriations were included as Division B of P.L. 118-47, while funding for the CFTC was included in the Agriculture appropriations contained in Division B of P.L. 118-42. The combined funding of $36.4 billion was approximately $18.4 billion less than the President's request, with the largest amount of the difference in rescissions of previous funding. These rescissions included $10.2 billion of IRS funding and $1.8 billion of funding for the Emergency Connectivity Fund.⁸

Table 1 below reflects the status of FY2024 FSGG appropriations measures at key points in the appropriations process. Table 2 lists, largely by title, the amounts requested by the President, included in the FSGG bills, and included in the final enacted legislation. Tables 3-7, respectively, detail the amounts for the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President, the judiciary, the District of Columbia, and the independent agencies. Specific columns in Tables 3-7 are FSGG agencies' enacted amounts for FY2023, the President's FY2024 request, the FY2024 amounts from the committee-reported versions of H.R. 4664 and S. 2309, and the enacted amounts from P.L. 118-42 and P.L. 118-47.

Financial Regulatory Agencies and FSGG Appropriations

Although financial services are a focus of the FSGG bill, the bill does not actually include funding for the regulation of much of the financial services industry.⁹ Financial regulatory agencies can be broadly subdivided into groups that regulate depositories (primarily banks), insurance, securities, and housing finance. Federal regulation of the banking industry is divided among the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (generally known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, which also has authorities over certain nonbank financial institutions).¹⁰ In addition, credit unions—another type of depository—which operate like banks in most ways, are regulated by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).¹¹ None of these agencies receives primary funding through the appropriations process, with only the FDIC inspector general and a small program operated by the NCUA currently funded in the FSGG bill.

Insurance is generally regulated at the state level, with some oversight at the holding company level by the Federal Reserve. There is a relatively small Federal Insurance Office (FIO) inside the Treasury that is funded through the Departmental Offices account, but the FIO has no regulatory authority.¹²

Federal securities regulation is divided between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the CFTC, both of which are funded through appropriations.¹³ The CFTC funding is a relatively straightforward appropriation from the general fund, whereas the SEC funding is provided by the FSGG bill but then offset through fees collected by the SEC.

Housing finance, particularly the two large government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Agency,¹⁴ which is funded primarily through assessments on regulated entities and receives no funding through the FSGG bill.

Although funding for many financial regulatory agencies may not be provided by the FSGG bill, legislative provisions affecting financial regulation in general and some of these agencies specifically have often been included in FSGG bills. For example, H.R. 4664 includes language changing the funding source and the leadership structure for the CFPB.¹⁵ No similar language was included in P.L. 118-47.

Committee Structure and Scope

The House and Senate Committees on Appropriations reorganized their subcommittee structures in early 2007. Each chamber created a new Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee. In the House, the jurisdiction of the FSGG Subcommittee is composed primarily of agencies that had been under the jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, the District of Columbia, and Independent Agencies, commonly referred to as TTHUD.¹⁶ In addition, the House FSGG Subcommittee was assigned four independent agencies that had been under the jurisdiction of the Science, State, Justice, Commerce, and Related Agencies Subcommittee: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the SEC, and the Small Business Administration (SBA).

In the Senate, the jurisdiction of the FSGG Subcommittee is a combination of agencies from the jurisdiction of three previously existing subcommittees. Most of the agencies that had been under the jurisdiction of the Transportation, Treasury, Judiciary, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee were assigned to the FSGG Subcommittee.¹⁷ In addition, the District of Columbia, which had its own subcommittee in the 109^th Congress, was placed under the purview of the FSGG Subcommittee, as were four independent agencies that had been under the jurisdiction of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee: the FCC, FTC, SEC, and SBA. As a result of this reorganization, the House and Senate FSGG Subcommittees have nearly identical jurisdictions except that CFTC is under the jurisdiction of the FSGG Subcommittee in the Senate and the Agriculture Subcommittee in the House.