Half a century of Justice Department budget authority.
The Department of Justice's budget authority, FY1976– FY2031, from OMB's Historical Tables. DOJ dates to 1870, but the table's by-agency row begins FY1976 — there is no earlier comparable figure in this source, and none is fabricated. Budget authority includes the mandatory special funds and supplemental/grant surges, so the spikes are real — the 1994 Crime Act and COPS, the Recovery Act, and the COVID-era grant funding — rising above a steadier appropriated base.
FY2027 budget authority
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nominal · OMB estimate · total agency BA
All-time peak
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Series span
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0 fiscal years
Years parsed
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contiguous, numeric — self-checked
DOJ total budget authority — the arc since FY1976
nominal (current $) · OMB Historical Table 5.2Reading the arc
DOJ budget authority is not a smooth line. The base discretionary budget grows roughly with the rest of government, but agency-wide budget authority jumps whenever a large grant or relief program lands: the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act and COPS, the Recovery Act in FY2009, and the COVID-era grant surge in FY2021. Those are real appropriations and mandatory special-fund flows, not base growth — which is exactly why a department-level monitor keeps the recurring appropriated discretionary base separate from one-time grants, supplementals, and the mandatory special funds. This series is shown in nominal dollars: OMB's Historical Table 5.2 does not publish a constant-dollar basis, and we do not synthesize one.