III.  THE BUDGET FOR THE FEDERAL PROGRAM

FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 1947

SUMMARY OF THE BUDGET

For the first time since the fiscal year 1930 the Budget for the next fiscal year will require no increase in the national debt.

Expenditures of all kinds, authorized and recommended, in the next year are estimated at just above 35.8 billion dollars.  Net receipts are estimated at 31.5 billion dollars.  The estimated difference of 4.3 billion dollars will be met by a reduction in the very substantial balance which will be in the Treasury during the next fiscal year.

A large part of the activities outside defense and war liquidation, aftermath of war, and international finance, classified as “other activities” in a following table, is still due to repercussions of the war.  These “other activities” include more than 2 billion dollars for aids to agriculture and net outlays for the Commodity Credit Corporation-almost double the expenditures for the same purposes in prewar years.  This increase is due mainly to expenditures for purposes of price stabilization and price support resulting from the war food production program.  Other increases in this category are due to the fact that certain wartime agencies now in the process of liquidation are included in this group of activities.  If all expenditures for those activities which are directly or indirectly related to the war are excluded, the residual expenditures are below those for corresponding activities in prewar years.  In making this comparison account should be taken of the fact that, while prewar expenditures were affected by direct relief and work relief for the unemployed, the postwar budgets are affected by the considerable increase in pay rates and other increases in costs and prices.

To elaborate, the Budget, as I have remarked above, reflects on both sides of the ledger the Government’s program as recommended by the Executive.  It includes estimates not only of expenditures and receipts for which legislative authority already exists, but also of expenditures and receipts for which authorization is recommended.

The Budget total for the next fiscal year, the year that ends on June 30, 1947, is estimated at just above 35.8 billion dollars-about a third of the budgets for global war, although nearly four times the prewar budgets.  This estimate is based on the assumption that a rapid liquidation of the war program will be associated with rapid reconversion and expansion of peacetime production.  The total includes net outlays of Government corporations.

The estimated expenditures in the next and current fiscal year compare as follows with those of a year of global war and a prewar year: 

Total Budget expenditures

Fiscal year:  (in millions)

1947 $35, 860

1946 67,229