You ask a difficult question! The number of appropriations bills is not set in law or governed by House or Senate rules, and has varied over the years. The number stabilized at 13 in the mid-1970s. The combinations of federal departments and agencies within each bill appear to be largely a matter of historical evolution -- the product of various struggles over the years among Appropriations Committee subcommittee chairmen, each seeking to exercise jurisdiction over the subjects they favored. And as with any other committee's jurisdiction in Congress, once "owned" it is very difficult to wrest away subject matter from panels whose chairmen and members have developed specialization and interest in a given issue, as well as political ties to advocacy groups for that issue.

The House Appropriations Committee was created in 1865. Until 1877 it controlled all federal spending, dividing the work among 14 subcommittees. From 1877-1885, the House became increasingly restless and dissatisfied with the enormous power the appropriators had accrued, and gave some of the spending responsibilities to legislative committees. In 1885, the House ended up stripping the Committee of its jurisdiction over all but 6 of the 14 spending bills, transferring control to the relevant legislative committees. However, this solution to what was perceived as too much centralized power over spending not surprisingly led to greater spending. It also so diffused action on money bills that it made any unified consideration of financial policy-making extremely difficult.

As a result, the House eventually restored full jurisdiction of all spending legislation to the House Appropriations Committee in 1920 (the Senate followed suit in 1922). The Appropriations Committees then returned to the consideration of 14 individual appropriations bills containing funding for blocs of federal departments and agencies.

The way these departments and agencies are packaged -- not necessarily being related to one another in function -- presents some dilemmas for policy-makers, especially since the enactment of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. Since then, budget allocations (spending limits) are assigned each fiscal year to the House Appropriations Committee, which then divides them among its (now) 13 subcommittees. Known as "302(b)" sub-allocations, these pre-ordained spending levels require that each subcommittee make funding decisions among a group of federal departments and agencies with purposes and missions unrelated to one another.

In the 105th Congress, the House Appropriations and the Senate Appropriations Committees each have 13 subcommittees which produce 13 spending bills annually. Following is a list of the subcommittees' jurisdictions and the agencies and departments their respective bills cover. You can also obtain jurisdictional information from the Senate Appropriations Committee's web-site. Visit http://www.senate.gov/~appropriations/jurisd.htm

Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies