It sounds like you and I have both encountered the same concept (though for the life of me I can not recall or find the source).
The problem that we have here with this specific aspect of the monstrosity is that this "act" is a mishmash of "Appropriations" and "Authorizations" mixed in with the establishment of a new set of "Entitlements."
Using this Glossary of Political Economy Terms, we can distinguish:
Entitlement program:
The kind of government program that provides individuals with personal financial benefits (or sometimes special government-provided goods or services) to which an indefinite (but usually rather large) number of potential beneficiaries have a legal right (enforceable in court, if necessary) whenever they meet eligibility conditions that are specified by the standing law that authorizes the program. The beneficiaries of entitlement programs are normally individual citizens or residents, but sometimes organizations such as business corporations, local governments, or even political parties may have similar special "entitlements" under certain programs. The most important examples of entitlement programs at the federal level in the United States would include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, most Veterans' Administration programs, federal employee and military retirement plans, unemployment compensation, food stamps, and agricultural price support programs.
Authorization bill:
A (proposed) formal act (or “law”) of a legislative body (such as the U.S. Congress or a state legislature) that legally establishes a new government agency or program or else renews or extends an existing agency or program whose previous legal authorization to exist would otherwise expire with the passage of time. Authorizations may be for one year or more than one year — about one-half of current Federal spending is by agencies or programs subject to annual re-authorization, while the other half gets its legal basis either from longer term authorization bills or from permanent laws that provide spending authority automatically to ongoing "entitlement" programs like Social Security. Authorization bills also include specific figures as funding levels for the agencies and programs, but these sums are upper limits only (for the guidance of the appropriations committee) — no money can actually be spent or committed by the agency or program administrators until after a separate appropriation bill has also been passed and signed into law, legally enabling the Treasury to disburse the money.
Appropriation bill:
A (proposed) formal action by a legislative assembly (such as the U.S. Congress or a state legislature) that specifies exact amounts of the government's money that the Treasury may legally pay out (through new hiring, contracts for purchases, findings of individuals' eligibility for income transfer payments, etc.) for each of a list of particular pre-authorized programs carried out by governmental agencies over a specific period of time (normally one year).
There are so many aspects of this goliath that are clearly NOT Entitlements (as commonly defined and used), and are enacted via Authorizations contained within, but are clearly NOT to be funded beyond the prior FY (when it was enacted) without the passage of specific Appropriations bills. They simply can not be allowed to mash all of this garbage into this one bill and assume that they have going forward funding (especially into perpetuity like the example I described in my last post).
I don't think it would be difficult for the current House to put the kibosh on this illegal spending if they set their mind to it. Hopefully disallowing the spending for the current FY will hold off implementation, until the whole thing is sent into the trash-bin by SCOTUS later this year.