Data Sources and Methodologies

Legislation values:

• Agency Funding To-Date: The value of the four supplemental laws passed by Congress is approximately $2.59 trillion. This value reflects the total value of appropriation warrants made to agencies’ TAS accounts to date for each of the four laws passed
• Appropriation warrants reflect Congressional action to fund programs and provide each agency the amount of money they are authorized to withdraw from the General Fund of the U.S. Government and period of availability of those funds. The total estimated value of the four laws only includes current appropriation warrants issued, which could change. The value of each law could change because there are parts of the laws that do not state explicit program costs or limits on the total funding that can be used to meet the law’s requirements. This could also result in additional appropriations being issued to fulfill the law’s intent if the original appropriation is exhausted
• H.R. 6074 Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act (CPRSAA) totaled an estimated $8 billion
• H.R. 6201 Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) totaled an estimated $19 billion
• H.R. 748 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act totaled an estimated $2.08 trillion in funding
• H.R. 266 Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act (PPP HCEA) totaled an estimated $483 billion
• Estimated Tax Relief: The total value of estimated deferred and reduced taxes provided by the FFCRA4 and CARES Act5 are taken from the CBO’s analysis of each law. The tax relief value is the sum of the CBO’s estimated two year (FY 2020 through 2021) estimated tax revenue impact for each law
• Total Estimated Lending and Utilization: The estimated value of lending is equal to the sum of the credit, direct, and indirect loans made available with funding provided by the four supplemental appropriations
• Estimated total loan and loan guarantee values were calculated for each program using information provided by each agency. Loan and loan guarantees funded by the supplemental appropriations include: The Department of the Treasury’s Payroll Support Program for Pandemic Relief for Aviation Workers, Credit Assistance for Air Carriers and Businesses Critical to National Security,6 and the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL),7 and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP),8 as well as the total estimated credit made available through the Federal Reserve Emergency Lending facilities9
• Total credit made available for the Federal Reserve Emergency Lending Facilities was calculated based on the funds committed by Treasury to these programs. As of December 31, 2020 the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) returned the unobligated funds to Treasury for these programs.
• At the time of publishing data on the Defense Production Act Loan Program is not yet available and therefore the program is not included in the calculation of Total Estimate Lending made available by the four laws nor are any loans for this program included in the utilized lending total
• Total utilized lending was calculated using the most recent data on reported loans and loan guarantees for the reporting period provided by each agency: The Department of the Treasury’s Payroll Support Program for Pandemic Relief for Aviation Workers10, Credit Assistance for Air Carriers and Businesses Critical to National Security11, the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL)12 and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)13, and the Federal Reserve Emergency Lending facilities14. Total value of loan guarantees issued for the USDA’s Rural Development Business and Industry CARES Act Program15 reflect data reported as of the close of the two months prior to the publishing date due to the reporting timeline

Calculating total spending:

• Data from the Governmentwide Treasury Account Symbol Adjusted Trial Balance System (GTAS) including data typically included in the SF-133 Report on Budget Execution and Budgetary Resources, which provides granular budgetary data for each Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) account, was used to identify and track spending of funds appropriated in the supplemental laws
  • After appropriation warrants are issued, agencies also report the value of funds appropriated by TAS in GTAS. In this analysis, we use the Total Budgetary Resources reported in GTAS which include total appropriations, transfers, and reimbursable funds available for each account. Total Budgetary Resources do not align exactly with the total value of appropriations warrants for each TAS due to inclusion of these additional funds. These funds are included to provide a more complete picture of the total budget for each account and how those funds are obligated and outlayed. Discrepancies in the totals across these two data sources can also be caused by time lags in reporting changes in appropriations in GTAS, or in recording and reconciling transfers among TAS
• Supplemental spending is tracked using the Disaster Emergency Fund Code (DEFC) reported in the GTAS data. All agencies are required per Office of Management and Budget Memo M-20-21: Implementation Guidance for Supplemental Funding Provided in Response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) to track spending related to each of the of the laws passed using the previously established DEFC attribute, with newly provided values that link each transaction to the specific funding legislation16
• GTAS data, using the reported DEFC and aggregating by TAS account, was used to calculate Total Budgetary Resources, new obligations and upwards adjustments, unobligated balance (end-of-year total), and gross outlays17 of supplemental spending executed as of the close of the reporting period18
• The total values for each TAS account were merged with the account metadata obtained via the Central Accounting Reporting System (CARS). Spending was then aggregated to generate the total funding values reported by agency and federal account
• Agency totals were aggregated using TAS account data at the Allocation Transfer Agency (ATA) identifier. In cases where the ATA is null, the Agency Identifier (AID) is used, with a few exceptions. Agencies that use a shared AID were aggregated using the Financial Reporting Entity Code (FREC), and certain armed forces agencies were classified as Department of Defense following the logic used to classify agencies on USAspending.gov19