Blurred Boundaries Examining the Boundary Between Authorizations and Appropriations

Abstract

Congressional regulations delineate a distinction between defense authorization and appropriation bills, entrusting policy responsibilities to the Armed Services Committees and funding authority to the Appropriations Committees. However, overlapping jurisdictional boundaries often complicate this structure. This thesis explores whether the language used in legislation indicates jurisdictional overreach between these two committee systems. Employing a mixed-method approach, we conducted a Python-based keyword frequency analysis on the National Defense Authorization Acts and Defense Appropriations (NDAA) Bills from fiscal year (FY) 2020 through fiscal year 2024 to find instances of such overreach. This was followed by visual contextual verification and a third-party review to evaluate the frequency and type of provisions that are jurisdictionally non-conforming. The results revealed that FY2024 contained 15 instances of jurisdictionally non-conforming provisions out of 145 keyword occurrences, while the Appropriations Bill had 5 out of 96 indications of jurisdictionally non-conforming provisions. This suggests that authorizers may engage in jurisdictional overreach more frequently than appropriators. These findings challenge the conventional belief that fiscal committees are the primary source of overreach. The analysis demonstrates a method for analyzing congressional committee behavior.