This report provides an overview of FY2015 appropriations actions for accounts traditionally funded in the appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies (L-HHS-ED). This bill provides discretionary and mandatory appropriations to three federal departments: the Department of Labor (DOL), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Department of Education (ED). In addition, the bill provides annual appropriations for more than a dozen related agencies, including the Social Security Administration (SSA). Discretionary funds represent less than one-quarter of the total funds appropriated in the L-HHS-ED bill. Nevertheless, the L-HHS-ED bill is typically the largest single source of discretionary funds for domestic non-defense federal programs among the various appropriations bills (the Department of Defense bill is the largest source of discretionary funds among all federal programs). The bulk of this report is focused on discretionary appropriations because these funds receive the most attention during the appropriations process. The L-HHS-ED bill typically is one of the more controversial of the regular appropriations bills because of the size of its funding total and the scope of its programs, as well as various related policy issues addressed in the bill such as restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion and for research on human embryos and stem cells. See the Key Policy Staff table at the end of this report for information on which analysts to contact at the Congressional Research Service with questions on specific agencies and programs funded in the L-HHS-ED bill. This report is divided into several sections. The opening section provides an explanation of the scope of the L-HHS-ED bill (and hence, the scope of this report), as well as an introduction to important terminology and concepts that carry throughout the report. Next is a series of sections describing major congressional actions on FY2015 appropriations and (for context) a review of the conclusion of the FY2014 appropriations process. The following section provides a high-level summary and analysis of proposed and enacted mandatory and discretionary appropriations for FY2015, compared to comparable FY2014 funding levels. The body of the report concludes with overview sections for each of the major components of the bill: the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, and Related Agencies. These sections provide selected highlights of the FY2015 omnibus, compared to proposed appropriations in the Senate subcommittee-approved stand-alone FY2015 L-HHS-ED bill, the FY2015 President's request, and comparable FY2014 levels. Finally, an Appendix provides a summary of budget enforcement activities for FY2015. This includes information on the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA; P.L. 112-25 ) and sequestration, as well as procedural efforts related to budget resolutions and subcommittee spending allocations. This report is focused strictly on appropriations to agencies and accounts that are subject to the jurisdiction of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittees of the House and the Senate Appropriations Committees (i.e., accounts traditionally funded via the L-HHS-ED bill). Department "totals" provided in this report do not include funding for accounts or agencies that are traditionally funded by appropriations bills under the jurisdiction of other subcommittees. The L-HHS-ED bill provides appropriations for the following federal departments and agencies: the Department of Labor; the majority of the Department of Health and Human Services, except for the Food and Drug Administration (provided in the Agriculture appropriations bill), the Indian Health Service (provided in the Interior-Environment appropriations bill), and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (also funded through the Interior-Environment appropriations bill); the Department of Education; and more than a dozen related agencies, including the Social Security Administration, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Railroad Retirement Board. Note also that funding totals displayed in this report do not reflect amounts provided outside of the regular appropriations process. Certain direct spending programs, such as Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance and parts of Medicare, receive funding directly from their authorizing statutes; such funds are not reflected in the totals provided in this report because they are not subject to the regular appropriations process (see related discussion in the " Important Budget Concepts " section). The L-HHS-ED bill includes both discretionary and mandatory appropriations. While all discretionary spending is subject to the annual appropriations process, only a portion of mandatory spending is provided in appropriations measures. Mandatory programs funded through the annual appropriations process are commonly referred to as appropriated entitlements . In general, appropriators have little control over the amounts provided for appropriated entitlements; rather, the authorizing statute controls the program parameters (e.g., eligibility rules, benefit levels) that entitle certain recipients to payments. If Congress does not appropriate the money necessary to meet these commitments, entitled recipients (e.g., individuals, states, or other entities) may have legal recourse. Most mandatory spending is not provided through the annual appropriations process, but rather through direct spending budget authority provided by the program's authorizing statute (e.g., Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance). The funding amounts in this report do not include direct spending budget authority provided outside of the appropriations process. Instead, the amounts reflect only those funds, discretionary and mandatory, that are provided through appropriations acts. Note that, as displayed in this report, mandatory amounts for the FY2015 President's request reflect current law (or current services) estimates; they do not include any of the Administration's proposed changes to a program's authorizing statute that might affect total spending. (In general, such proposals are excluded from this report, as they typically require authorizing legislation.) Note also that the report focuses most closely on discretionary funding. This is because discretionary funding receives the bulk of attention during the appropriations process. (As noted earlier, although the L-HHS-ED bill includes more mandatory funding than discretionary funding, the appropriators generally have less flexibility in adjusting mandatory funding levels than discretionary funding levels.) Budget authority is the amount of money Congress allows a federal agency to commit or spend. Appropriations bills may include budget authority that becomes available in the current fiscal year, in future fiscal years, or some combination. Amounts that become available in future fiscal years are typically referred to as advance appropriations . Unless otherwise specified, appropriations levels displayed in this report refer to the total amount of budget authority provided in an appropriations bill (i.e., "total in the bill"), regardless of the year in which the funding becomes available. In some cases, the report breaks out "current-year" appropriations (i.e., the amount of budget authority available for obligation in a given fiscal year , regardless of the year in which it was first appropriated). As the annual appropriations process unfolds, current-year appropriations plus any additional adjustments for congressional scorekeeping are measured against 302(b) allocation ceilings (budget enforcement caps for appropriations subcommittees that traditionally emerge following the budget resolution process). Unless otherwise specified, appropriations levels displayed in this report do not reflect additional scorekeeping adjustments , which are made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to reflect conventions and special instructions of Congress. Table 1 provides a timeline of major legislative actions toward full-year FY2015 L-HHS-ED appropriations. The remainder of this section provides additional detail on these and other steps toward full-year L-HHS-ED appropriations. On December 16, 2014, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015 (P.L. 113-235). The final version of this bill was agreed to in the House on December 11 and in the Senate on December 13. The enacted law provided regular, full-year appropriations for 11 of the 12 annual appropriations bills, including L-HHS-ED (see Division G). This law appropriated $164 billion in discretionary funding for L-HHS-ED (not counting emergency Ebola funds), which is roughly comparable to amounts provided in FY2014 (+0.05%) and the FY2015 President's request (-0.1%). In addition, the FY2015 omnibus provided an estimated $681 billion in mandatory L-HHS-ED funding, for a total of $846 billion for L-HHS-ED as a whole. (See Figure 1 for the breakdown of discretionary and mandatory L-HHS-ED appropriations in the FY2015 omnibus.) In addition to non-emergency L-HHS-ED appropriations, the omnibus also provided $2.7 billion in emergency-designated funding to HHS in response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa (see Division G, Title VI). These funds were distributed as follows: $1.8 billion to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for activities to enhance domestic preparedness, support overseas operations to end the Ebola epidemic, and prevent the spread of Ebola and other infectious diseases; $238 million to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for clinical trials on experimental Ebola vaccines and treatments; and $733 million to the Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, which is administered within the HHS Office of the Secretary, for drug and vaccine development and domestic hospital preparedness. The FY2015 omnibus followed three government-wide continuing resolutions (CRs), which had provided temporary funding earlier in the fiscal year ( P.L. 113-203 , P.L. 113-202 , P.L. 113-164 ).