Chart of the Day: Unauthorized Spending

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy said this week that they plan to target billions of dollars in “unauthorized” federal spending as part of their effort to trim waste from the budget.

“DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood,” the duo wrote in an op-ed at The Wall Street Journal.

A July 2024 report from the Congressional Budget Office states that spending on programs whose authorization had expired totaled roughly $516 billion in fiscal year 2024. But as Aimee Picchi of CBS News explains Thursday, much of that unauthorized spending is for basic programs such as veterans’ healthcare, the Federal Aviation Administration and assorted defense and security programs — programs that Congress very much intended to fund, but for whatever reason failed to take the additional steps to authorize formally. It’s not clear that the lack of authorization indicates anything other than a bureaucratic misstep or oversight, driven perhaps by the political dysfunction that tarnishes much of what happens in Washington on a regular basis.

As the chart below shows, veterans’ healthcare is by far the largest single item, accounting for $119 billion of unauthorized spending in 2024. Kelly Rissman of the Independent reports that the Veterans’ Health Care Eligibility Reform Act of 1996 helps provide the funding for veterans’ healthcare, but the authorization for the program expired in 1998. Congress keeps funding the program, though, and will likely continue to do so, whether the formal authorization is in place or not.

That’s not to say that the lack of authorization isn’t a problem, or that the DOGE project won’t use a lack of authorization to target programs. NASA’s budget of roughly $25 billion appears to be unauthorized, and that could open the door for Musk and Ramaswamy — one of whom owns a massive private space transportation company — to push for its reduction or elimination. The Head Start program is unauthorized, as well, and that could pave the way for the Republicans to finally end a program they have long criticized.

Overall, though, the potential savings appear to be far smaller than the $516 billion figure suggests. Congress intends to spend most of the money that is currently unauthorized, and whatever reductions that occur because of a lack of authorization will likely fall far short of the $500 billion target cited by the DOGE masters.

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