Members of Congress and the Obama Administration are engaged in debate over short- and long-term efforts to reduce the federal deficit and stabilize the national debt. Within that debate, attention has focused on proposals to alter the overall size and composition of total federal spending. The bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform issued recommendations for both spending reductions and revenue increases on December 1, 2010. On February 14, 2011, President Obama submitted his detailed FY2012 budget request to Congress, and two months later he released a set of deficit reduction policies intended to build on his February proposal. Unlike the February budget submission, the President's April Framework for Shared Prosperity and Shared Fiscal Responsibility does not include detailed proposals and has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The House Budget Committee reported a concurrent resolution on the FY2012 budget ( H.Con.Res. 34 ) that was based on a document titled Path to Prosperity , released by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on April 5. The full House passed H.Con.Res. 34 on April 15 after defeating substitute versions offered by the Congressional Black Caucus ( H.Amdt. 256 ), the Congressional Progressive Caucus ( H.Amdt. 257 ), the Republican Study Committee ( H.Amdt. 258 ), and the Democratic Caucus ( H.Amdt. 259 ). The Senate has not yet acted on a budget resolution for FY2012. This CRS report highlights spending trends and key policy initiatives in the President's February budget and April F ramework , and in the House-passed budget resolution, for the six functional categories of the federal budget that comprise the human resources "superfunction." The six human resources functions (and their function codes) are education, training, employment, and social services (Function 500); health (primarily Medicaid) (Function 550); Medicare (Function 570); income security (Function 600); Social Security (Function 650); and veterans benefits and services (Function 700). As shown in Figure 1 , the human resources superfunction accounts for the majority of federal spending, with nearly 70% of federal outlays in FY2010. This report does not discuss the broad outlines of the FY2012 budget proposals, such as their projected levels of total spending, revenues, or deficits. Moreover, the report does not attempt to quantify the costs or savings associated with specific proposals. The purpose of the report is to give a very broad overview of the spending trends and policy recommendations proposed by the Administration and the House budget resolution—specifically, for the human resources budget functions—as background for the detailed budget and appropriations discussions that are taking place this year. For more information on the budget process itself and the status of the FY2012 budget, see CRS Report 98-721, Introduction to the Federal Budget Process , coordinated by [author name scrubbed]; CRS Report R40472, The Budget Resolution and Spending Legislation , by Megan Suzanne Lynch; and CRS Report R41685, The Federal Budget: Issues for FY2011, FY2012, and Beyond , by [author name scrubbed]. The federal budget is divided into 20 functional categories (e.g., national defense, health, energy, transportation), which are further divided into subfunctions. These functional categories provide a broad statement of budget priorities and facilitate the analysis of trends in related programs; they are used for informational purposes in the congressional budget process. For purposes of analysis, some budget functions are grouped together into budget "superfunctions" (e.g., national defense, human resources, physical resources). Congress begins formal consideration of the annual budget resolution after the President submits his detailed budget request for the coming fiscal year. (For example, as noted, President Obama submitted his FY2012 budget to Congress in February and the House passed a budget resolution in April.) The congressional budget resolution is not signed by the President and does not become public law. Rather, it is an internal blueprint for Congress to use in its consideration of legislation and spending for the coming fiscal year. The resolution establishes target levels for spending (budget authority and outlays) and revenues, along with an estimate of the deficit (or surplus) and the national debt. The resolution includes targets for the coming fiscal year and projected levels for subsequent years. Unlike the President's budget request submitted in February, the congressional budget resolution does not specify spending levels by program but instead establishes aggregate spending targets for each of the functional categories referred to above. These aggregate amounts are based on certain "assumptions" about spending for specific programs, but the assumptions are not typically specified in the resolution, nor are they binding on the appropriations committees or committees with jurisdiction over mandatory spending programs or tax provisions. Key assumptions are sometimes identified in the Budget Committee report that accompanies the concurrent resolution. The congressional budget process allows for several enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance with overall targets established in the resolution. This report continues with a brief overview of the human resources superfunction as a whole, looking at long-term historical and future projected trends in spending under current law, in comparison with other major components of the federal budget. The section compares human resources spending under current law, as estimated by CBO, with the President's February budget request and amounts included in the House budget resolution. The next section identifies selected overarching policies included in the Administration and House budgets that are intended to reduce spending and/or stabilize the national debt; these policies could directly or indirectly result in lower spending across budget functions. The remainder of the report focuses on the six individual categories that comprise the human resources superfunction. Each section compares the CBO current law baseline for FY2011 through FY2021 with the President's February proposal (as re-estimated by CBO) and the House budget resolution, in constant FY2011 dollars. An Appendix to the report includes a table showing each of the human resources budget functions as a percentage of GDP, and two tables showing federal budget authority and outlays (in nominal dollars) for each of the six functions. Sources of information used in this report include the following: The Obama Administration's FY2012 budget documents: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget . White House fact sheet on The President's Framework for Shared Prosperity and Shared Fiscal Responsibility : http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/04/13/fact-sheet-presidents-framework-shared-prosperity-and-shared-fiscal-resp . An Analysis of the President's Budgetary Proposals for Fiscal Year 2012 , by the Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12130 . The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America's Promise , House Budget Committee: http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf . H.Con.Res. 34 , as passed by the House, and the accompanying House Budget Committee report ( H.Rept. 112-58 ). Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Chairman Ryan , by the Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12128 . Figure 2 shows the trend in federal outlays for major categories of the federal budget, as a share of the national economy, from FY1962 through FY2010. The figure also shows CBO's projections for these categories, assuming no change in current law, through FY2021. The figure illustrates the growth in spending for human resources over the last five decades, and shows the importance of this component of the budget, in relation to other government spending. Specifically, the figure shows that outlays for human resources, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), have grown substantially since 1962, when they accounted for 5.6% of GDP. CBO expects they will have peaked in FY2010, at 16.4%, and will fall to 14.8% in FY2014. This pattern reflects the assumed economic recovery, lower spending for programs that respond automatically to economic conditions such as Unemployment Insurance and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the expiration of all stimulus funding. Beginning in FY2015, however, human resources spending would rise again as a share of GDP, according to CBO, reaching 15.7% by FY2021. While this is lower than the FY2010 level of 16.4% of GDP, it still exceeds the pre-recession (2007) level of 12.7%. Fueling this increased spending are several factors, including the continuing effects of the baby boom generation's retirement and increased enrollment in Medicare and Social Security, certain program design features such as wage indexing in Social Security (which allows initial monthly benefits to replace a constant proportion of pre-retirement earnings and keep pace with rising living standards), medical cost inflation in excess of general inflation, and new spending attributable to implementation of the health care reform law of 2010. The effect of these factors can be seen in Figure 3 , which shows the trend in outlays for each of the six human resources budget functions, as a share of GDP, from FY1962 through FY2010 and then projected through FY2021. The figure illustrates that spending in the human resources superfunction has been increasingly dominated by four categories: health (Function 500, which primarily consists of Medicaid), Medicare (Function 570), income security (Function 600), and Social Security (Function 650). With no change in current law, CBO projects that spending for income security as a share of GDP will contract over the next decade, as will spending for the two smallest functions—education, training, employment, and social services (Function 500), and veterans benefits and services (Function 700). On the other hand, CBO projects that spending for three functions—health (mostly Medicaid), Medicare, and Social Security—will increasingly consume more of the economy as the population ages and the cost of health care continues to rise.