Budget sequestration

Budget sequestration is a procedure in United States law that limits the size of the federal budget. Sequestration involves setting a hard cap on the amount of government spending within broadly defined categories; if Congress enacts annual appropriations legislation that exceeds these caps, an across-the-board spending cut is automatically imposed on these categories, affecting all departments and programs by an equal percentage. The amount exceeding the budget limit is held back by the Treasury and not transferred to the agencies specified in the appropriation bills. The word sequestration was derived from a legal term referring to the seizing of property by an agent of the court, to prevent destruction or harm, while any dispute over said property is resolved in court.

The term "budget sequestration" was first used to describe a section of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Act of 1985 (GRHDRA). The hard caps were abandoned and replaced with a PAYGO system by the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, which was in effect until 2002. Sequestration was later included as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resolved the debt-ceiling crisis; the bill set up a Congressional debt-reduction committee and included the sequestration as a disincentive to be activated only if Congress did not pass deficit reduction legislation. However, the committee did not come to agreement on any plan, activating the sequestration plan. The sequestration was to come into force on January 1, 2013 and was considered part of the fiscal cliff, but the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 delayed it until March 1 of that year.

Budget sequestration was first authorized by the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (BBEDCA, Title II of Pub. L. 99-177). This is known as the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Act. They provided for automatic spending cuts (called "sequesters") if the deficit exceeded a set of fixed deficit targets. The process for determining the amount of the automatic cuts was found unconstitutional in the case of Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986) and Congress enacted a reworked version of the law in 1987. Gramm-Rudman failed, however, to prevent large budget deficits. The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 supplanted the fixed deficit targets.

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