2. Executive Office of the President · Notable
Reinstate administrative PAYGO
Printed page 47 2. Executive Office of the President
“Regardless of whether Congress adopts the President's full set of budget recommendations, the President should reintroduce the concept of administrative pay-as-you-go, or administrative PAYGO.”
What has happened
- Not started
Administrative PAYGO has not been reintroduced. The statutory version — Title III of Division B of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, which required agencies to offset administrative actions increasing direct spending — expired by its own terms on 31 December 2024, three weeks before the evidence window opened, so there was nothing to preserve and the ask is live. Nothing has replaced it: OMB Circular A-11 (2025) discusses only statutory PAYGO under the 2010 Act and contains no administrative PAYGO section, and no memorandum from M-25-10 through M-26-17 reintroduces the concept. The regulatory budget in EO 14192 is a cap on regulatory costs, not a pay-as-you-go rule for direct spending.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Negative search. Read the sunset clause in the enrolled text of P.L. 118-5, section 268: “This title shall expire on December 31, 2024.” (govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-118publ5/html/PLAW-118publ5.htm). Searched the full text of the 2025 edition of OMB Circular A-11 for “administrative PAYGO” and “administrative pay-as-you-go” — no hits; the only PAYGO material is the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010. A search of the Federal Register records we keep for “paygo” or “pay-as-you-go” returns only OMB’s annual statutory PAYGO report notices (2025-01-30, 2026-01-28).
Unified Agenda (reginfo.gov, checked 2026-09-01). OMB’s full 2026 agenda of active entries (12 RINs) carries no PAYGO entry of any kind. Eight of the twelve are Cost Accounting Standards conformance rules; the remainder are the Uniform Guidance revision (0348-AB88, tracked on #55), Expanding Secure Access to CIPSEA Data Assets (0348-AB80), Presumption of Accessibility (0348-AB79), Managing Senior Professional Performance (0348-AB92) and the American Security Drone Act list (0348-AB93). Administrative PAYGO would be reinstated by Circular or memorandum rather than by rulemaking, so this negative is exhaustive as to OMB rulemaking and silent as to internal OMB budget practice.
- Action
- reinstate
- Object
- Administrative PAYGO
- ID
- 39