Members of Congress and the Obama Administration are engaged in debate over short- and long-term efforts to sustain recovery and further stimulate the economy, reduce the federal budget deficit, and stabilize the national debt. Within that debate, policymakers hold different points of view on the optimal size and composition of federal spending and revenues. Adding to the issue's complexity, this year's budget discussions are occurring against the backdrop of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA, P.L. 112-25 ), which put in place budget enforcement mechanisms and procedures intended to achieve a specified amount of deficit reduction over a 10-year period. President Obama submitted a detailed FY2013 budget proposal to Congress on February 13, 2012. The House Budget Committee subsequently reported a concurrent resolution on the FY2013 budget ( H.Con.Res. 112 ), based on a proposal by Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, which the full House passed on March 29. Several Members of the Senate have offered budget proposals, including a resolution by Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad that is based on recommendations of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (also known as the Simpson-Bowles Commission). The Conrad/Fiscal Commission resolution was discussed at a markup session on April 18, but no vote was taken and the measure has not been formally introduced. On May 16, the Senate voted on motions to proceed to consideration of several alternative budget resolutions; however, none was agreed to. Although the House and Senate have not agreed on a concurrent resolution on the FY2013 budget, the FY2013 appropriations process is underway in both chambers. Moreover, on May 15, the House passed the Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act ( H.R. 5652 ), which is intended to repeal and replace the automatic spending reduction (or "sequestration") scheduled for January 2, 2013 (discussed later in this report) with specific mandatory spending reductions over the period FY2012-FY2022. This CRS report highlights and compares projected spending trends and policy initiatives in three distinct proposals— the President's FY2013 budget, the House budget resolution, and the Conrad/Fiscal Commission resolution —which represent different viewpoints about spending and revenues. The report focuses specifically on proposals affecting programs in the six functional budget categories that comprise the human resources "superfunction." Collectively, these six functions accounted for a majority (67%) of federal outlays in FY2011 (see Figure 1 , later in the report). 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). The purpose of this report is to give a broad overview of proposed spending trends and policy recommendations for human resources programs. The report does not discuss the broad outlines of the three proposals, such as their projected levels of total spending, revenues, or deficits. The report is not comprehensive in its coverage of all provisions in the proposals, nor does it attempt to quantify the costs or savings associated with specific proposals, or track their legislative status. This report begins by briefly explaining the concepts of budget "functions" and "superfunctions" and then provides a short discussion of the Budget Control Act of 2011 ( P.L. 112-25 ). The BCA placed limits on discretionary spending for FY2012-FY2021 and established an automatic spending reduction procedure. It is necessary to understand how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) treated these BCA provisions in developing its current law baseline projections and, subsequently, how CRS adjusted this baseline to prepare and present the analysis in this report. The report then compares projected federal spending under current law for the human resources superfunction as a whole—and for each of the six functions within—with the President's budget proposal, the House budget resolution, and the Conrad/Fiscal Commission resolution. Each section compares the CBO current law baseline for FY2012 through FY2022 with the President's FY2013 budget proposal (as re-estimated by CBO) and the House and Conrad/Fiscal Commission budget resolutions, in constant FY2012 dollars. Key policy initiatives proposed by the Administration and assumed in each of the budget resolutions are identified. An Appendix to the report includes supporting tables. 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. 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. 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 appropriations acts and other legislation for the coming fiscal year. The resolution establishes enforceable levels for projected spending (budget authority and outlays) and revenues, along with an estimate of the deficit (or surplus) and the national debt. The resolution includes amounts for the coming fiscal year and projections for subsequent years. Unlike the President's budget request submitted each February, the congressional budget resolution does not specify spending levels by program but instead establishes aggregate spending amounts for each of the functional categories referred to above. These aggregate amounts are based on certain "assumptions" about spending for specific programs. However, these assumptions are not typically specified in the resolution, nor are they binding on the appropriations committees or committees with jurisdiction over mandatory spending or tax provisions. Key assumptions are sometimes identified in the Budget Committee report that accompanies the concurrent resolution. The congressional budget process includes tools for enforcing the annual budget resolution. Members of Congress may raise points of order to bar consideration of legislation that would violate the spending ceilings or revenue floors in the resolution, among other provisions. Congress also has used the "reconciliation" process to implement budget policy. For example, the House-passed budget resolution for FY2013 ( H.Con.Res. 112 ) contains reconciliation instructions to six authorizing committees to find a specific amount of deficit reduction over 10 years. The committee report accompanying the budget resolution identified "illustrative" policy options by which to achieve these savings, but the committees are free to report whatever changes they want within their jurisdictions in response to a reconciliation directive. In response to the reconciliation instructions in H.Con.Res. 112 , the six committees reported their recommendations to the House Budget Committee, which assembled them into a single reconciliation bill ( H.R. 5652 ) that was passed by the House on May 15, 2012. The BCA, enacted in August 2011, provided for increases in the debt limit and established procedures designed to reduce the federal budget deficit. Two components of the BCA are relevant to understanding the CBO "current law" baseline for human resources programs, as it is presented in this report. First, Title I of the BCA established enforceable limits on discretionary spending for FY2012 through FY2021. For FY2012 and FY2013, the law provided separate amounts for discretionary spending in the "security" and "nonsecurity" categories. "Security" was defined broadly to include the Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA), Homeland Security (DHS), and State, in addition to the Department of Defense and certain other activities; and "nonsecurity" was defined as everything else. For FY2014 and subsequent years, no distinction was made between security and nonsecurity; that is, Title I of the law established a single discretionary spending limit for each of those years. Second, the BCA established a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, tasked with developing legislation by November 23, 2011, to achieve $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the FY2013-FY2021 period. If Congress failed to pass such legislation by January 15, 2012, reducing the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion, a series of automatic spending reductions would be triggered, specified in Section 302 of the act. In fact, the Joint Committee did not meet its deadline and the necessary legislation was not enacted. Thus, under current law, the first automatic spending reductions are scheduled to take effect on January 2, 2013. These automatic procedures include sequestration of mandatory spending for each of FY2013-FY2021, a one-year sequestration of discretionary spending for FY2013, and lower discretionary spending limits for FY2014-FY2021. In addition to being lowered, the original discretionary spending limits (discussed above) are redefined so that security now consists only of budget Function 050 (which is primarily the Department of Defense). Spending reductions are to be equally divided between security and nonsecurity, which means that half the reductions triggered by failure of the Joint Committee process will come primarily from the Department of Defense, and the other half will come from the remainder of the federal budget. It should be noted that a significant amount of nonsecurity spending is either exempt from the sequestration process or otherwise subject to a special rule that limits the size of the reduction. In its overall current law baseline estimates and projections, CBO incorporated the discretionary spending limits imposed by Title I of the BCA (referred to in this report as the "original BCA spending limits") and the additional spending reductions triggered by failure of the Joint Committee process (referred to as the "additional BCA spending reductions"). However, with limited exceptions, insufficient information was available for CBO to estimate the impact of these BCA provisions at the budget function level. Thus, CBO allocated all budgetary effects of the BCA—other than those related to defense and Medicare—to budget Function 920 (allowances), which is used, among other purposes, as a placeholder category for budgetary effects not yet assigned elsewhere.