The Deficit and the Public Debt

Report Outline
State of the Federal Goverment's Finances
Federal Surpluses and Deficits of the Past
Budget Policies of Roosevelt Administration
The Future of the National Debt
Special Focus

State of the Federal Goverment's Finances

Overestimates and Underestimates of the Deficit

The Public Debt of the United States at the end of the present fiscal year, June 30, 1936, will approximate $34,500,000,000. The increase in debt during the year—$5,800,000,000, including bonds and cash to be paid out in connection with the bonus—will be the largest in the peacetime history of the country.

The deficit for the year will also register a new peacetime high. Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau testified before the Senate Finance Committee, April 30, that the federal government's expenditures for the year, including bonus outlays, would exceed its receipts by $5,966,000,000. The deficit for the next fiscal year, he paid, would drop to $2,675,000,000 and would be only a little larger than was estimated by the President in his budget message at the opening of the present session of Congress.

Five days before the Secretary appeared before the Finance Committee, the President had spoken of the deficit for the present fiscal year as amounting to $3,000,000,000. In his speech before the National Democratic Club at New York, April 25, the President said: