Recommendation: The Director of OMB should provide, concurrent with any future climate change funding reports to Congress, funding information for federal programs with fiscal exposure to climate change. This information should include costs to repair, replace, and improve the weather-related resilience of federally-funded property and resources; costs for federal flood and crop insurance programs; and costs for disaster assistance programs. (Recommendation 1)

Agency: Executive Office of the President: Office of Management and Budget
Status: Open

Comments: In a July 2018 letter, OMB reiterated its disagreement with this recommendation, as described in the Agency Comments and Our Evaluation section of the report. OMB also stated that it does not anticipate providing funding information for federal programs with fiscal exposure to climate change concurrent with future climate change reports to Congress. We continue to believe that OMB would have better assurance that it was providing policymakers with the information necessary to make climate change spending trade-offs, if in addition to the funding information for science, technology and international assistance it has previously reported to Congress, OMB also reported funding information for programs whose costs were likely to increase due to climate change impacts. In July 2019, the Disclosing Aid Spent to Ensure Relief Act or the DISASTER Act passed the House and was referred to the Senate. If enacted, this legislation would require OMB to annually report to Congress on all disaster-related assistance provided by the federal government, which includes all federal obligations related to disaster response, recovery, mitigation efforts, and administrative costs associated with these activities for specified agencies and programs. As of October 2020, the legislation has not progressed in the Senate. We will provide updated information regarding this recommendation when it becomes available.

Recommendation: The Director of OMB should provide, concurrent with any future climate change funding reports to Congress, a detailed analysis of federal climate change programs it considers to be fragmented, overlapping, or duplicative. (Recommendation 2)

Agency: Executive Office of the President: Office of Management and Budget
Status: Open

Comments: In a July 2018 letter, OMB reiterated its disagreement with this recommendation, as described in the Agency Comments and Our Evaluation section of the report. OMB also stated that it does not anticipate providing a separate, detailed analysis of federal climate change programs that it considers to be fragmented, overlapping, or duplicative. We continue to believe that because OMB collects and reports information on federal climate change funding, OMB is uniquely situated to conduct an assessment of potentially fragmented, overlapping, or duplicative programs across the full range of agencies engaged in climate change activities and that by providing this information to Congress in conjunction with future funding reports, OMB could help decision makers more effectively target limited resources. As of October 2020, OMB has not provided a climate change funding report to Congress since the issuance of our April 2018 report.