Discretionary spending
Definition
Discretionary spending is federal money that requires an annual appropriations act to be spent. Congress sets the amount fresh each year for programs like defense, education, and most agency operations. Mandatory spending, by contrast, is set by separate laws that establish eligibility and benefit formulas and does not require a new vote each year to keep flowing.
Why it matters
Because discretionary spending needs a new law every year, it is the part of the budget lawmakers actually negotiate and can cut, freeze, or grow in real time, while mandatory programs like Social Security keep paying out regardless of what that year's Congress wants, unless the underlying law itself changes.
Seen in the wild
The annual appropriations process, split across bills like Defense and Labor-HHS, funds discretionary programs, and a lapse in any of those bills is what triggers a partial government shutdown.1