Congress uses an annual appropriations process to fund discretionary spending, which supports the projects and activities of most federal government agencies. This process anticipates the enactment of 12 regular appropriations bills each fiscal year. If regular appropriations are not enacted prior to the start of the fiscal year (October 1), continuing appropriations may be used to provide temporary funding until the annual appropriations process can be concluded. Continuing appropriations acts are often referred to as "continuing resolutions," or "CRs," because they are typically enacted in the form of a joint resolution. CRs may be enacted for a period of days, weeks, or months. If any of the 12 regular appropriations bills are not enacted by the time that the first CR for a fiscal year expires, further extensions of that CR might be enacted until all regular appropriations bills have been completed or the fiscal year ends. None of the FY2018 regular appropriations bills was enacted prior to the enactment of H.R. 601 , a temporary CR. The measure provides continuing appropriations for projects and activities covered by all 12 of the regular annual appropriations bills from the beginning of the fiscal year, October 1, 2017, through December 8, 2017 (Division D). The measure also included separate divisions that establish a program to provide foreign assistance concerning basic education (Division A—Reinforcing Education Accountability in Development Act), supplemental appropriations for disaster relief requirements for FY2017 (Division B), and a temporary suspension of the public debt limit (Division C). On September 8, 2017, the President signed H.R. 601 into law ( P.L. 115-56 ). This report provides an analysis of the continuing appropriations provisions in H.R. 601 . The first two sections summarize the overall funding provided ("Coverage, Duration, and Rate") and budget enforcement issues associated with the statutory discretionary spending limits ("The CR and the Statutory Discretionary Spending Limits"). The third section of this report provides short summaries of the provisions in this CR that are agency-, account-, or program-specific. These summaries are organized by appropriations act title. In some instances, additional information about those appropriations and how they operate under a CR is provided. For general information on the content of CRs and historical data on CRs enacted between FY1977 and FY2016, see CRS Report R42647, Continuing Resolutions: Overview of Components and Recent Practices , by [author name scrubbed] and [author name scrubbed]. This section of the report discusses the three components of a CR that generally establish the purpose, duration, and amount of funds provided by the act: 1. A CR's "coverage" relates to the purposes for which funds are provided. The projects and activities funded by a CR are typically specified with reference to regular (and, occasionally, supplemental) appropriations acts from the previous fiscal year. When a CR refers to one of those appropriations acts and provides funds for the projects and activities included in such an act, the CR is often referred to as "covering" that act. 2. The "duration" of a CR refers to the period of time for which budget authority is provided for covered activities. 3. CRs usually fund projects and activities using a "rate for operations" or "funding rate" to provide budget authority at a restricted level but do not prescribe a specified dollar amount. The funding rate for a project or activity is based on the total amount of budget authority that would be available annually for that project or activity under the referenced appropriations acts and is pro-rated based on the fraction of a year for which the CR is in effect. Division D covers all 12 of the regular annual appropriations bills by providing continuing budget authority for projects and activities funded in FY2017 by that fiscal year's regular appropriations acts—as specified in Section 101 of P.L. 115-56 , this includes primarily Divisions A-K of the FY2017 Consolidated Appropriations Act ( P.L. 115-31 ) for 11 of the 12 regular bills and Division A of P.L. 114-223 for the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, as well as some additional specified measures and provisions. Statutory limits on discretionary spending are in effect for FY2018 as established by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA; P.L. 112-25 ). The CR includes both budget authority that is subject to those limits and also budget authority that is effectively exempt from those limits—including that designated or otherwise provided as "Overseas Contingency Operations/Global War on Terrorism" (OCO/GWOT), "continuing disability reviews and redeterminations," "disaster relief," and "emergency requirements." Budget authority is provided by the CR under the same terms and conditions as the referenced FY2017 appropriations acts. Effectively, this requirement extends many of the provisions in the FY2017 acts that stipulated or limited agency authorities during FY2017. In addition, in general none of the funds are to be used to initiate or resume an activity for which budget authority was not available in FY2017. A goal of these and similar provisions in other CRs, as well as many of the other provisions discussed in the sections below, is to protect Congress's constitutional authority to provide annual funding in the manner it chooses in whatever final appropriations measures are enacted. Section 106 provides that funding in the CR is effective October 1, 2017, through December 8, 2017—about the first 10 weeks of the fiscal year. The CR provides that, in general, budget authority for some or all projects and activities could be superseded by the enactment of the applicable regular appropriations act or another CR prior to or on December 8. For projects and activities funded in the CR that a subsequent appropriations act does not fund, budget authority would immediately cease upon such enactment, even if prior to December 8. The CR provides budget authority for projects and activities funded in FY2017 appropriations acts at a rate based on the amount of funding provided in those acts for the duration of the CR (through December 8). The rate is based on the net of all funding provisions applicable to FY2017, including those that had the effect of reducing budget authority. For entitlement and other mandatory spending that is funded through appropriations acts, Section 111 provides funding to maintain program levels under current law. Most projects and activities funded in the CR are subject to an across-the-board decrease in Section 101(b) that would reduce the rate by 0.6791% below the level of FY2017 funding. Under Section 114, this decrease does not apply to appropriations designated or otherwise provided as OCO/GWOT, disaster relief, and emergency requirements. This decrease does apply, however, to advance appropriations enacted in previous fiscal years that first become available in FY2018. Appropriations for FY2018 are subject to statutory discretionary spending limits on categories of spending designated as "defense" and "nondefense" spending pursuant to the BCA. The defense category includes all discretionary spending under budget function 050 (defense); the nondefense category includes discretionary spending in the other budget functions. If discretionary spending is enacted in excess of a statutory limit in either category, the BCA requires the level of spending to be brought into conformance through "sequestration," which involves primarily across-the-board cuts to non-exempt spending in the category of the limit that was breached (i.e., defense or nondefense). The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) provides a preview report at the beginning of the calendar year calculating any adjustments to the existing statutory spending limits. For FY2018 the adjusted discretionary spending caps are $549.057 billion for defense and $515.749 billion for nondefense. Once discretionary spending is enacted, OMB evaluates that spending relative to the spending limits and determines whether sequestration is necessary. For FY2018 discretionary spending, the first such evaluation (and any necessary enforcement) is to occur within 15 calendar days after the 2017 congressional session adjourns sine die . For any FY2018 discretionary spending that becomes law after the session ends, the OMB evaluation and any enforcement of the limits would occur 15 days after enactment. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the budgetary effects of interim CRs on an "annualized" basis, meaning that those effects are measured as if the CR were providing budget authority for an entire fiscal year. According to CBO, the annualized amount for discretionary budget authority for regular appropriations subject to the BCA limits (including projects and activities funded at the rate for operations and anomalies) is $551.489 billion for defense and $518.109 for nondefense. Although the estimate of the annualized amount for each category exceeds the statutory spending limit, a sequester order would not yet be required. As noted by CBO, the authority to determine whether a sequestration is required—and, if so, how to make the necessary cuts in budget authority—rests with OMB. In addition, because the earliest that the statutory discretionary spending limits could be enforced by a sequester is 15 days after the end of the congressional session, and the CR expires on December 8, 2017, these amounts can be adjusted prior to that time by further appropriations legislation for FY2018. When spending effectively not subject to those limits—because it was designated or otherwise provided as OCO/GWOT, disaster relief, emergency requirement, or a program integrity adjustment—is included, CBO estimates total annualized budget authority in the CR of $1,183.058 billion. In addition to the general provisions that establish the coverage, duration, and rate, CRs typically include provisions that are specific to certain agencies, accounts, or programs. These provisions are generally of two types. First, certain provisions designate exceptions to the formula and purpose for which any referenced funding is extended. These are often referred to as "anomalies."