Most of the funding for the activities of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) comes from discretionary appropriations provided each year in the annual appropriations acts enacted by Congress. HUD's programs are primarily designed to address housing problems faced by households with very low incomes or other special housing needs. These include several programs of rental assistance for persons who are poor, elderly, and/or have disabilities. Three rental assistance programs—Public Housing, Section 8 Vouchers, and Section 8 project-based rental assistance—account for the majority of the department's non-emergency funding (almost 73% in FY2010). Two flexible block grant programs—HOME and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)—help communities finance a variety of housing and community development activities designed to serve low-income families. Other, more specialized grant programs help communities meet the needs of homeless persons, including those with AIDS. HUD's Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insures mortgages made by lenders to lower-income home buyers, many of whom have below-average credit records, and to developers of multifamily rental buildings containing relatively affordable units. FHA collects fees from insured borrowers, which are used to sustain the insurance fund and offset its administrative costs. Surplus FHA funds have been used to offset the cost of the HUD budget. In recent years, the HUD budget has also received significant amounts of emergency supplemental funding. Almost $20 billion was provided through HUD's budget for recovery assistance to communities affected by Hurricane Katrina and the other hurricanes of 2005. Most recently, the economic stimulus legislation ( P.L. 111-5 ) provided over $13 billion to HUD's programs. Table 1 presents total enacted appropriations for HUD over the past five years, including emergency appropriations. HUD's regular funding (not including emergency supplemental funding, discussed later) has increased by 57% in the past nine years. And, as demonstrated by the line in Figure 1 , the rate of growth has increased in recent years. In FY2004 and FY2005, year-over-year growth was relatively flat (under 2%), but since then, HUD's budget has had year-over-year increases of 5% or more each year, with growth of nearly 10% in FY2009 and nearly 12% in FY2010. Adjusting for inflation, the growth in "real" funding (shown by the gray bars in Figure 1 ) has been less robust. Over the nine-year period, adjusting for inflation, HUD's budget grew by about 17%. Through FY2008, the year-over-year growth never exceeded about 3.5%, and in two years there were declines. Most of the growth over the previous nine years has come in the last two years. As shown in Figure 2 , HUD's funding is made up of several components. The components of HUD's annual funding, or budget authority, include regular annual appropriations, emergency appropriations, rescissions, and offsets. HUD's programs and activities are funded almost entirely through regular annual appropriations , also referred to as discretionary appropriations. The amount provided in the annual appropriations acts each year generally determines how much funding will be obligated and eventually spent for each of HUD's programs and activities. In some years, Congress will also provide emergency appropriations , usually in response to disasters, through one or more of HUD's programs. These funds are generally provided outside of the regular appropriations acts—often in emergency supplemental spending bills—and are generally provided in addition to regular annual appropriations. Congressional appropriators are generally subject to limits on the amount of new non-emergency discretionary funding they can provide in a year. One way to stay within these limits is to provide less in regular annual appropriations. Another way is to find offsets. A portion of the cost of HUD's regular annual appropriations acts is generally offset in two ways. The first is through rescissions , or cancellations of unobligated or recaptured balances from previous years' funding. The second is through offsetting receipts and collections , generally derived from fees paid by HUD partners or clients. The interaction between new appropriations and offsets provided through rescissions, receipts, and collections determines HUD's total net budget authority. Net budget authority is also the "cost" of the HUD budget, as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office in its scorekeeping process. The total amount of net budget authority provided to HUD each year, while important for federal budgeting purposes, is not necessarily the best measure of the amount of funding that is being provided for HUD's programs and activities. Because of the role of offsets, declining or increasing net budget authority did not necessarily mean declining or increasing regular appropriations. As shown by the line in Figure 2 , which repeats the data shown by the line in Figure 1 , net non-emergency budget authority for HUD increased 57% between FY2002 and FY2010, from over $29 billion to over $46 billion. However, the overall increase in net new non-emergency budget authority masks several important trends. The 57% increase in net non-emergency budget authority is not fully attributable to increased appropriations for HUD programs. From FY2002 to FY2010, regular annual appropriations, which is the amount provided by Congress to fund HUD's programs and activities, grew by only 37% (shown by the dark green bars in Figure 2 ). During the same period, the amount available in offsetting receipts and collections and the amount rescinded, which Congress uses to reduce the cost of providing new appropriations, declined by more than 70% and 96%, respectively (shown by the dark and light red bars in Figure 2 ). As a result, part of the increase in net non-emergency budget authority from FY2002-FY2010 is attributable to decreases in the amount available in offsetting receipts and collections and the amount of rescissions taken. The 37% growth in regular appropriations during this period (shown by the dark green bars in Figure 2 ) is largely attributable to growth in HUD's Section 8 voucher and project-based rental assistance programs, which, combined, are the largest component of the HUD budget. As can be seen in Figure 3 , from FY2002 to FY2010, appropriations for the combined Section 8 programs grew by over 70%, while aggregate funding for all other HUD programs and activities grew by only 8%. During this period, the Section 8 programs went from accounting for about 46% of HUD's regular appropriations in FY2002 to accounting for about 57% of HUD's regular appropriations in FY2010. As can be seen in the chart, for a number of years, Section 8 funding grew while aggregate funding for all other HUD programs declined. However, in FY2009 and FY2010, funding for other HUD programs began to grow as well. The more than 70% decline in offsetting receipts shown in Figure 2 is largely attributable to declines in offsetting receipts available from the FHA mortgage insurance programs. The amount available from FHA to offset the cost of new HUD appropriations has declined from a high of over $3 billion in FY2004 to well under $0.5 billion in FY2010. The annual appropriations process generally begins with the release of the President's budget request in the spring of the prior fiscal year. The House and the Senate Appropriations Committees then hold hearings and begin crafting their versions of appropriations legislation. Since the federal fiscal year ends on September 30 and the new one begins on October 1, appropriations legislation must be enacted before September 30 in order to avoid a government funding lapse. In years when Congress does not complete appropriations action before the end of the fiscal year, Congress generally enacts short-term continuing resolutions, which continue funding for government programs at the prior fiscal year levels until final actions are taken. The FY2011 appropriations process began with the release of the President's budget on February 1, 2010, but did not end until more than a year later, when P.L. 112-10 was signed into law on April 15, 2011. The process of adopting final FY2011 funding spanned two calendar years as well as two Congresses. The following section of this report summarizes the major actions in the development of the FY2011 appropriations for HUD. Table 2 , which follows, compares HUD funding by account from FY2010 to FY2011. The President's FY2011 budget request was released on February 1, 2010. As shown in Table 2 , for FY2011 the President's budget requested about $45.6 billion in net new budget authority for HUD, a decrease of about 1% from the FY2010 enacted level. However, the requested decrease in net new budget authority would actually represent a 3% increase in appropriations for HUD programs in aggregate. The President's budget proposed to more than offset the overall increase in appropriations with a substantial increase in offsetting collections and receipts, which are estimated to come from proposed changes to the FHA mortgage insurance programs (see " The Federal Housing Administration Reforms and Funding Levels " later in this report). The President's budget requested the largest funding increases for the two Section 8 programs, followed by programs for the homeless and for HUD's research and technology needs. The President's budget requested decreased funding for other programs, including programs providing housing for persons who are elderly and persons with disabilities and public housing capital repairs. The President's budget requested no new funding for the brownfields redevelopment program. As shown in Table 2 , the FY2011 HUD funding bill approved by the House on July 29, 2010 ( H.R. 5850 ), would have provided about $1 billion more for HUD than requested by the President. These funding levels would have provided a 1% increase in net new budget authority over the FY2010 enacted level and a 5% increase in appropriations for HUD programs in aggregate.