CBO: Health a middling target for costly mandates

Congress has imposed many more new, unfunded federal mandates on sectors other than health care than on the health care sector in recent years, according to analysts at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The federal Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA) defines a mandate as a federal law or regulation that requires “non-federal entities to expend their resources to carry out national policies,” CBO analysts report in a new mandate study.

UMRA requires the CBO to tell members of Congress about the potential effects of proposed mandates. UMRA also requires the CBO to tell Congress if the total annual cost of the mandates included in a legislative proposal is likely to exceed $150 million, in 2013 dollars.

About 16 percent of the 9,000 legislative proposals reviewed since UMRA took effect have included private-sector mandates, and about 4 percent of the proposals included private-sector mandates that could have imposed more than $150 million in annual costs, the CBO analysts said.

In 2001, the CBO started reporting every year on the congressional mandate proposals that were actually enacted into law.

Congress enacted about 2,300 public laws between 2001 and 2011. Over that period, about 3 percent of the laws enacted included at least one private-sector mandate that was expected to impose more than $150 million in private-sector compliance costs.

For another 2 percent of the laws enacted, the CBO could not come up with private-sector mandate cost projections. 

The CBO analysts broke the number of high-cost mandate laws down by sector affected.