Credit Reform, Negative Subsidies, and FHA

After several years' experience with the new budgetary treatment of federal credit activity, or credit reform, it is appropriate to consider how this innovation is working. One objective of the new approach was to provide both estimates of the cost of credit assistance and a means of monitoring the performance of those estimates over time. In at least one—admittedly difficult—case, FHA single-family mortgage insurance, the reform is not succeeding in reporting the performance of the subsidy estimate because the agency's budget submissions are not consistent with the new accounting. This failure may result from the agency's inability to accept or adopt the fundamental changes in accounting concepts affected by credit reform. This article attempts to explain some of those changes and to show how they may be used to provide relevant information in the budget.