How The Money Rolls Out

Under the anesthetic of defense need, the U.S. taxpayer--who scarcely groaned as the Congress prepared to open him up and extract new taxes--gave only a brief convulsive twitch last week when he was told the fiscal year-end figures. In any other year those figures would have given him heart failure.

The figures were terrific, in any perspective but 1941's. In the 1940-41 fiscal year the Government spent $12,710,000,000--$3,712,000,000 more than in the preceding fiscal year. The year's revenues were the greatest in history: $7,607,000,000. The year's deficit was the third greatest in history: $5,103,000,000 (greater: 1918's $9,033,000,000; greatest: 1919's $13,370,000,000). And it seemed certain that next year's deficit would break at least the 1918 record.

Of the $12,710,000,000 spent, $6,048,000,000 went to defense, up from 1939-40's total of $1,559,000,000. For the Roosevelt Administration, after seven years of practice in free & easy spending, was now really swinging the spondulicks. There had been trouble getting in the groove: bureaucrats who were used to treating millions of dollars like cab fare had had to be taught how to spend billions, and spend them effectively. But the response had been gallant; the rate had gone up from July 1940's $177,000,000 to June 1941's $807,000,000. Goal: to spend on defense as much more than $1,000,000,000 per month as the U.S. economy can take.

The public debt had jumped $5,994,000,000 from fiscal 1940 to the alltime high of $48,961,000,000. The sky was the limit (the sky was temporarily set at $65,000,000,000); in the coming fiscal year the Government would try to spend nearly twice as much--a total of about $22,000,000,000--for defense and non-defense operations. There was nothing to say or do about it. All the U.S. had to do now was pay more taxes and hope that the spending would soon buy something besides bottlenecks.

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