Budgeting for Federal Insurance

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed: (1) options for using accrual concepts for federally budgeted insurance programs; and (2) tradeoffs and implementation concerns associated with using different options. GAO found that: (1) the cash basis of reporting used in the federal budget may misrepresent the government's costs because the government's insurance commitments are subject to a lag time between program collections and can be spread out over several budget periods; and (2) an accrual basis of reporting could improve the accuracy of costs in the budget, but several implementation issues must be resolved before this method of accounting can be used.