The Federal Budget and the Public Debt

Report Outline
Depression Deficits of the Federal Government
Budget Policies of the Roosevelt Administration
General and Emergency Expenditures and Federal Assets
Special Focus

Depression Deficits of the Federal Government

Course of Receipts, Expenditures, and Debt, 1930–1934

During five years of depression, ensuing upon the stock market crash of October, 1929, deficits of the federal government totaled $11,655.000,000, accompanied by an increase of $11,005,000,000 in the national debt. Further deficits of large proportions are in prospect for the remainder of the present fiscal year and the next-fiscal year, with the outlook for a balanced budget in 1937 still uncertain.

The fiscal year 1930 ended with a surplus, due to the fact that the principal tax levies were based upon income received during the calendar year 1929, but in no subsequent year have the government's revenues come within striking distance of its total expenditures. The deficit of the fiscal year 1934 was nearly four and a half times as large as that of 1931.

In the federal government's last period of unbalanced budgets—the fiscal years 1917–1919, inclusive—it accumulated a total deficit of $23,257,000,000, and from March 31, 1917, to August 31, 1919, when the war debt reached its peak, the increase in debt for $25,315,000,000. The accumulated deficit of the depression period to date is a little more than half the total deficit of the war-armistice period. The public debt, however, is $592,946,000 in excess of the peak reached in 1919.