explain the idea behind the following text: The power for noncompulsory spending stems from annual appropriation acts, which are under the control of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. Most defense, education, and transportation programs, for example, are funded that way, as are a variety of other federal programs and activities. Those appropriations are subject to a set of budget enforcement rules and processes that differ from those that apply to mandatory spending. As the Congress considers appropriation acts, CBO tallies the budget authority those acts would provide and estimates the outlays that would result. This can be done multiple ways. One way could be increasing the number of requirements for a potential recipient of this spending to be eligible to be made a recipient. Some mandatory spending programs (like agricultural ones) have the spending calculated by legislation. So, the second way would be to change how this spending would be calculated. For example, let us say a (frictional) provision currently says something like "For every person in the household of the recipient, the program pays the recipient $10". To reduce spending, that provision could be amended so that instead of a program paying $10 for every person in the recipient's household, it pays $5. Mandatoryor directspending includes spending for entitlement programs and certain other payments to people, businesses, and state and local governments. Mandatory spending is governed by statutory criteria; it is not normally set by annual appropriation acts. Outlays for the nation's three largest entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) and for many smaller programs (unemployment compensation, retirement programs for federal employees, student loans, and deposit insurance, for example) are mandatory spending. Social Security and some other mandatory spending programs are in effect indefinitely, but some (for example, some agriculture programs) expire at the end of a given period. 60 percent of federal spending in 2012 (other than for the government's net interest costs) was mandatory. Legislation that changed direct spending would, by itself, affect the budget deficit because no further legislative action would be required for the change in spending to occur. There is more to mandatory spending than that, but you get my point. Back in the 90s, budget reconciliation bills decreased the deficit is not just spending less in discretionary spending, but by changing the spending provisions authorizing mandatory spending to decrease how much these programs cost