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In response to a congressional request, GAO examined the current budget treatment of the Commodity Credit Corporation's (CCC) commodity certificates to: (1) determine if CCC should treat the certificates as cash for budget purposes; and (2) develop alternative budget reporting methods.

GAO evaluated three budget reporting methods for commodity certificates, and found that: (1) continuing to treat certificate issuances as noncash transactions, excluding them from the budget authority and outlay totals, and including a supplementary table would involve no change, but would not ensure systematic congressional review; (2) treating the certificates as cash transactions and including them in the total budget authority and outlay totals would ensure congressional review of their use, but would add noncash amounts to a cash-based total; and (3) establishing new terms and totals for the use of noncash assets to finance government programs would provide Congress with more information regarding the use of commodity certificates, but could initially reduce understanding of budget information.