Budget Process: Use of PAYGO and Discretionary Offsets

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the past use of discretionary spending as an offset for mandatory spending increases or tax decreases under the pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) provisions of the Budget Enforcement Act (BEA), focusing on: (1) instances where mandatory spending reductions have offset discretionary increases; (2) instances where discretionary spending reductions have offset mandatory spending increases or tax reductions; (3) changes in the budget scoring guidelines resulting from the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 to determine if they increased the flexibility to use mandatory reductions to offset discretionary spending increases; and (4) BEA scoring with regard to the use of offsets.