The subscription to the Bank amounts to 3,175 million dollars.  Of this total, 2 percent must be paid immediately and the Bank is required to call a further 8 percent of the subscription during its first year of operations.  The balance of the subscription is payable when required by the Bank either for direct lending or to make good its guarantees.  It is likely that the United States will be required to pay little if any more than the initial 10 percent before the end of the fiscal year 1947.

I anticipate that net expenditures of the Export-Import Bank and expenditures arising from the British credit and the Bretton Woods Agreements will amount to 2,614 million dollars, including the noncash item of 950 million dollars for the fund, in the fiscal year 1946, and 2,754 million dollars in the fiscal year 1947.

GENERAL GOVERNMENT

The responsibilities of the Government, in both domestic and international affairs, have increased greatly in the past decade.  Consequently, the Government is larger than it was before the war, and its general operating costs are higher.  We cannot shrink the Government to prewar dimensions unless we slough off these new responsibilities—­and we cannot do that without paying an excessive price in terms of our national welfare.  We can, however, enhance its operating efficiency through improved organization.  I expect to make such improvements under the authority of the Reorganization Act of 1945.

The appropriations which I am recommending for general government for the fiscal year 1947 are 1,604 million dollars under existing legislation.  This is an increase of 458 million dollars over the total of enacted appropriations for the current fiscal year, but a substantial part of this increase is due to the fact that the appropriations for the fiscal year 1946 were made prior to the general increase of employees’ salaries last July 1, for which allowance is made in the anticipated supplemental appropriations for 1946.  The recommended total for 1947 for general government, like the estimates for national defense and other specific programs, does not allow for the further salary increases for Government employees which, I hope, will be authorized by pending legislation, but-the tentative lump-sum estimates under proposed legislation contemplate that such salary increases will be effective almost at once.

Expenditures for general government in the fiscal year 1947 are expected to continue the slowly rising trend which began in 1943.  This category includes a great variety of items—­not merely the overhead costs of the Government.  It includes all the expenditures of the Cabinet departments, other than for national defense, aids to agriculture, general public works, and the social security program.  It includes also expenditures of the legislative branch, the Judiciary, and many of the independent agencies of the executive branch.  Consequently, the estimated increase in 1947 in the total of general government expenditures reflects a variety of influences.