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.

Now included in general government are certain activities formerly classified under national defense.  Some of these, such as certain functions of the former foreign Economic Administration and the War Manpower Commission, are still needed during the period of reconversion; others are in the process of liquidation.  A few wartime activities, for example, the international information and foreign intelligence services and some of the wartime programs for controlling disease and crime, have become part of our regular government establishment.  Expenditures for these former wartime functions explain about 40 percent of the increase in expenditures for general government.

Other increases are for civil aeronautics promotion, the business and manufacturing censuses, and other expanded business services of the Department of Commerce which have been referred to above; the forest and Soil Conservation Services and other committees of the Department of certain conservation activities of the Department of the Interior; and the collection of internal revenue in the Treasury Department.

The necessity for reestablishing postal services curtailed during the war and advances in the rates of pay for postal employees have increased substantially the estimated expenditures for postal service for both the current and the next fiscal year.  It is not expected that this increase will cause expenditures to exceed postal revenues in either year, although an excess of expenditures may occur in the fiscal year 1947 if salaries are increased further.