The Congressional Budget Act of 1974 (Titles I-IX of P.L. 93-344 , as amended; 2 U.S.C. 601-688; hereafter referred to as the "Budget Act") provides for the annual adoption of a concurrent resolution on the budget each year. The congressional budget resolution represents a budget plan for the upcoming fiscal year and at least the following four fiscal years. As a concurrent resolution, it is not presented to the President for his signature and thus does not become law. Instead, when adopted by Congress, the budget resolution serves as an agreement between the House and Senate on a congressional budget plan. As such, it provides the framework for subsequent legislative action on the annual appropriations bills, revenue measures, reconciliation legislation, and any other budgetary legislation. While the programmatic assumptions (i.e., the specific mix of revenue and spending policies that are assumed within the budget levels) are not binding, the totals and committee spending allocations may be enforced through points of order and through the budget reconciliation process (explained below). This report provides current and historical information on the budget resolution. It provides a list of the budget resolutions adopted and rejected by Congress since implementation of the Budget Act, including the U.S. Statutes-at-Large citations and committee report numbers, and describes their formulation and content. The report provides a table of selected optional components, a list of the budget reconciliation measures developed pursuant to directives contained in budget resolutions, and information on the number of years covered by budget resolutions. It also provides information on the consideration and adoption of budget resolutions, including an identification of the House special rules that provided for consideration of budget resolutions, the amendments in the nature of a substitute to the budget resolution considered in the House, the number and disposition of House and Senate amendments to budget resolutions, and dates of House and Senate action on budget resolutions. Congress has modified the congressional budget process several times since it was first established in 1974. The Appendix identifies laws, budget resolutions, and other resolutions that modified the procedures and requirements pertaining to the development, content, and consideration of the budget resolution. As originally enacted, the Budget Act provided for the annual adoption of two budget resolutions for each year. The first budget resolution, adopted in the spring, set nonbinding "targets" to guide the consideration of budgetary legislation. The second budget resolution, adopted in the fall (about two weeks before the beginning of the fiscal year), was intended to provide Congress, after considering and possibly completing action on specific budgetary legislation, the opportunity to either reaffirm or revise the budget levels in the first budget resolution. Additional budget resolutions, or revisions to the previous one, could be (and still can be) adopted at any time. The Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (Title II of P.L. 99-177 , 99 Stat. 1038-1101; hereafter referred to as the "Deficit Control Act") eliminated the requirement for a second budget resolution beginning in 1986 (for the FY1987 budget resolution). For several preceding years, for FY1983-FY1986, Congress did not adopt a second budget resolution but instead included a provision in the first budget resolution that made the spending and revenue totals in it binding automatically as of the beginning of the fiscal year. During the 41 years under the Budget Act (1975 to the present), Congress has completed action on 40 budget resolutions, including in some years multiple budget resolutions for a single fiscal year. In 32 of the 41 years, Congress adopted at least one budget resolution for the fiscal year. Congress did not complete action on a budget resolution for nine fiscal years, most recently for FY2015. Congress also adopted a second budget resolution in seven of the 41 years. In 1977, Congress adopted a third budget resolution for FY1977, further revising the budget levels that fiscal year. Table 1 lists all budget resolutions adopted by Congress, with the House and Senate votes on initial passage and adoption of the conference report. It also includes, in italics, budget resolutions reported or considered in one chamber but not the other for those fiscal years that Congress did not complete action on a budget resolution. The U.S. Statutes-at-Large citations for budget resolutions adopted by Congress are listed in Table 2 . (Although concurrent resolutions such as budget resolutions have no statutory authority, they are compiled in a special section of the U.S. Statutes-at-Large .) Table 3 lists the budget resolutions rejected in the House. No budget resolutions have been rejected in the Senate; however, the Senate rejected several motions to proceed to different budget resolutions in 2011 and 2012. Following the submission of the President's budget in January or February, Congress begins developing its budget resolution. The House and Senate Budget Committees are responsible for developing and reporting the budget resolution. Within six weeks after the President's budget submission, each House and Senate committee is required to submit its "views and estimates" relating to budget matters under its jurisdiction to its Budget Committee (Section 301(d) of the Budget Act). These views and estimates, often submitted in the form of a letter to the chair and ranking Member of the Budget Committee, typically include comments on the President's budget proposals and estimates of the budgetary impact of any legislation likely to be considered during the current session of Congress. The Budget Committees are not bound by these recommendations. The views and estimates often are printed in the committee report accompanying the resolution in the Senate or compiled in a separate committee print in the House. The budget resolution was designed to provide a framework to make budget decisions, leaving specific program determinations to the Appropriations Committees and other committees with spending and revenue jurisdiction. In many instances, however, particular program changes are considered when formulating the budget resolution. Program assumptions sometimes are referred to in the reports of the Budget Committees or may be discussed during floor action. Although these program changes are not binding, committees may be strongly influenced by these recommendations when formulating appropriations bills, reconciliation measures, or other budgetary legislation. Table 4 provides a list of the House, Senate, and conference reports to first budget resolutions reported or considered in either chamber. Section 301(a) of the Budget Act requires that the budget resolution include the following matters for the upcoming fiscal year and at least the ensuing four fiscal years: Aggregate levels of new budget authority, outlays, the budget surplus or deficit, and the public debt; Aggregate levels of federal revenues and the amount, if any, by which the aggregate levels of federal revenues should be increased or decreased by legislative action; Amounts of new budget authority and outlays for each of the major functional categories; and For purposes of Senate enforcement procedures, Social Security outlays and revenues (although these amounts are not included in the budget surplus or deficit totals due to their off-budget status). Originally, the Budget Act mandated that budget resolutions cover only the upcoming fiscal year beginning on October 1 (referred to as the budget year). A desire to use the budget resolution as a tool for budget planning and other factors prompted Congress to expand this time frame to include the upcoming fiscal year as well as the two ensuing fiscal years. Congress used the authority provided by the elastic clause of the Budget Act to adopt three-year budget resolutions for the period covering the second budget resolution for FY1980 through the FY1986 budget resolution. The practice of including three fiscal years was formalized by the 1985 Deficit Control Act. The Budget Enforcement Act (BEA) of 1990 (Title XIII of P.L. 101-508 , Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, 104 Stat. 1388-573-1388 through 630) temporarily extended to five fiscal years the period the budget resolution is required to cover. The 1990 BEA provision originally covered five-year periods beginning in FY1991 and continuing through FY1995; this provision was extended to cover the FY1996 through FY1998 budget resolutions in 1993 (Title XIV of P.L. 103-66 , Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, 107 Stat. 683-685). As an integral part of Congress's goal of achieving a balanced budget by FY2002, the FY1996 and FY1997 budget resolutions covered seven and six fiscal years, respectively. The Budget Enforcement Act of 1997 (Title X of P.L. 105-33 , Balanced Budget Act of 1997, 111 Stat. 677-712) amended the Budget Act to require permanently that a budget resolution cover the budget year and at least the four ensuing fiscal years (for a minimum of five fiscal years). Table 5 provides information regarding the number of years covered by the budget resolutions agreed to by Congress. Congress also may revise budget levels for the current year in the budget resolution pursuant to Section 304 of the Budget Act. Congress has adopted 15 first budget resolutions that revised current-year budget levels. In addition to the content required by the Budget Act, Section 301(b) lists several other matters that may be included in the budget resolution. Table 6 provides a table indicating selected components included in first budget resolutions for FY1976-FY2016 on which Congress completed action (i.e., the House and Senate agreed). The most important of the optional matters is arguably the inclusion of budget reconciliation directives provided by Section 310 of the Budget Act. Budget reconciliation is an optional two-step process Congress may use to bring direct spending, revenue, and debt limit levels into compliance with those set forth in budget resolutions. In order to accomplish this, Congress first includes budget reconciliation directives in a budget resolution directing one or more committees in each chamber to recommend changes in statute to achieve the levels of direct spending, revenues, debt limit, or a combination thereof agreed to in the budget resolution. The legislative language recommended by committees then is packaged "without any substantive revision" into one or more budget reconciliation bills as set forth in the budget resolution by the House and Senate Budget Committees. In some instances, a committee may be required to report its legislative recommendations directly to its chamber.