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 74% in FY2009). 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 with 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 2005 hurricanes. 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 annual funding, or budget authority, is made up of several components, including 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. As a result, 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 , generally 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 program level funding. Congressional appropriators are generally subject to limits in the amount of new, non-emergency, discretionary appropriations 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 for spending. 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 budget authority. 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 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. For example, if Congress has increased appropriations for HUD's programs and activities at the same time that offsetting receipts are increasing by a greater amount, then HUD's total budget authority may appear to be declining. Conversely, if Congress has reduced appropriations for HUD's programs and activities at the same time that offsetting receipts are declining by a greater amount, then HUD's budget authority may appear to be increasing. If Congress wished to maintain level budget authority for HUD programs, Congress would increase appropriations if offsets are declining (or, provide less appropriations if offsets are increasing). As shown by the line in Figure 1 , net non-emergency budget authority for HUD increased 41% between FY2002 and FY2009, from over $29 billion to over $40 billion. However, the increase in net new non-emergency budget authority masks several important trends. From FY2002 to FY2009, regular annual appropriations, which is the amount available to fund HUD's programs and activities, grew by 20%. During the same period, the amount available in offsetting receipts and collections, which Congress uses to reduce the cost of providing new appropriations, declined by more than 75% (see Figure 1 ). As a result, the increase in total non-emergency budget authority for HUD from FY2002 to FY2009 is not fully attributable to increases in appropriations for HUD's programs and activities; rather, part of the increase in total budget authority is attributable to decreases in the amount available in offsetting receipts. For example, in FY2007, Congress provided $39 billion in regular appropriations for HUD's programs and activities. As shown by the line in Figure 1 , since $3 billion was available from offsets and rescissions, HUD's net non-emergency budget authority was only $36 billion. If less had been available in offsets, the cost to Congress of providing $39 billion in regular appropriations (net new budget authority) would have been higher. The increase in regular (non-emergency) appropriations shown in Figure 1 (from just over $35 billion in FY2002 to over $42 billion in FY2009) is largely attributable to the growth in appropriations for the project-based and tenant-based Section 8 programs. From FY2002 to FY2009, non-emergency appropriations for the Section 8 programs grew by 50%; non-emergency appropriations for all other programs and activities during that period grew by only about 4%. As can be seen in Figure 2 , appropriations for the Section 8 program have grown from about 46% of HUD's regular appropriations in FY2002 to about 54% of HUD's regular appropriations in FY2009. Congress has increased funding for these programs in part because it has funded new Section 8 vouchers, in some cases to serve new families, and in some cases to provide assistance to families whose project-based rental assistance has expired or whose public housing has been demolished or sold. In other cases, it has required new appropriations to continue to serve the same families in the project-based rental assistance program, as previous funding for long-term rental assistance contracts has run out. The decline in offsetting receipts over this period is largely attributable to declines in excess receipts in the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) mortgage insurance programs (discussed later in this report). As shown in Figure 3 , from the peak (in FY2004) to the lowest point (in FY2008), the amount of offsetting receipts available from the FHA mortgage insurance program declined by 92%. While the amount of FHA offsetting receipts increased in FY2009, they are expected to decline below the FY2008 level in FY2010, although, as discussed later in this report, that decline may be partially offset by an expected increase in receipts from the Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA) account. Table 2 presents President Obama's FY2010 budget request for HUD and the congressional response, compared to the prior year's enacted budget authority. Four totals are given in Table 2 : "budget authority provided" and "available budget authority," both including and excluding emergency appropriations. Total budget authority provided includes current year appropriations, plus advance appropriations provided in the current fiscal year for use in the next fiscal year; total available budget authority includes current year appropriations, plus advance appropriations provided in the prior fiscal year for use in the current fiscal year. Congress is scored by CBO for the amount of available budget authority in an appropriations bill; however, the Appropriations Committees' documents often discuss the amount of budget authority provided. President Obama's first HUD budget requested a 7.7 % increase in regular annual appropriations for HUD programs. However, that increase would require a 9.5% increase in net new budget authority, because of a decline in the amount requested for rescission. The House-passed version of H.R. 3288 would have provided a more than 11% increase in regular annual appropriations for HUD programs, 3% more than the President's request. That increase would have required a more than 13% increase in net new budget authority, also attributable to a decline in rescissions. The Senate-passed version of H.R. 3288 proposed less than the House-passed bill, but more than the President's request. It would have resulted in an 8.5% increase in regular annual appropriations for HUD programs, which would have required a more than 10% increase in net new budget authority. The final FY2010 funding bill split the difference between the House and Senate versions, providing more than the Senate bill, but less than the House bill. Specifically, it provided a 9% increase in regular annual appropriations for HUD programs, which required an 11% increase in net new budget authority. These overall funding levels are about 1% higher than President Obama requested. The FY2010 budget was the first of the Obama Administration. While it was completed on a short time-frame, it contained several new initiatives that reflect the Obama Administration's priorities.