Four decades of health-and-human-services budget authority.
HHS's total budget authority, FY1980–FY2031, from OMB's Historical Tables. HHS was created from the former Department of Health, Education & Welfare in 1980; there is no comparable “HHS” series before it. This is total agency budget authority — overwhelmingly mandatory Medicare and Medicaid — and it has grown into the largest single agency line in the federal budget.
FY2027 budget authority
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nominal · OMB estimate
Latest projection peak
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Series span
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0 fiscal years
Years parsed
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contiguous, numeric — self-checked
HHS total budget authority — the arc since 1980
nominal (current $) · OMB Historical Table 5.2 · mandatory-dominatedReading the arc
Unlike a disaster-driven agency, HHS's arc is a steady, compounding climb — the signature of MANDATORY entitlement growth. Medicare (enacted 1965) and Medicaid expand with an aging population and rising health costs; CHIP (1997), Medicare Part D (2006), and the ACA Medicaid expansion and exchanges (2014) each step the line up, with the FY2021 COVID relief a one-time spike above trend. Because the growth is mandatory, a department-level monitor keeps it separate from the discretionary base Congress sets each year. This series is shown in nominal dollars: OMB's Historical Table 5.2 publishes no constant-dollar basis, and we do not synthesize one.