From: dewey@sooner.ctci.com (Dewey Coffman)
Subject: December Federal Deficit Balloons
Reply-To: dewey@sooner.ctci.com
Organization: CTC, Inc., Austin, TX. U.S. of A. 78757-3109
Distribution: tx
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 15:05:35 GMT

     December Federal Deficit Balloons,  Washington (AP)

   President Clinton is facing a record budget deficit this year, even
as he struggles to find the money for a jobs-producing economic
stimulus package.
   The deficit in December the third month of the 1993 fiscal year was
$38.9 billion, compared with $2.5 billion a year earlier, the Treasury
Department said Tuesday.
   For the first three months of fiscal 1993, the gap between spending
and revenues totaled $120.5 billion, up 44 percent from $83.8 billion
a year earlier.
   About $24 billion of the deficit jump in December occurred because
the government sent out January's Social Security checks on Dec. 31
instead of Jan. 3, as originally scheduled.
   But even without that anomaly, the deficit would be running ahead
of last year's, which totaled a record $290.2 billion.
   The Bush administration, just before it left office, projected a
1993 deficit of $327 billion, while the Congressional Budget Office
predicted this week that it would total $310 billion.
   Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen said earlier this week that the
administration would consider such tough deficit-reducing measures as
a broad-based energy tax.
   Labor Secretary Robert Reich said in a television interview Tuesday
that the Clinton administration is likely to propose a $15 billion to
$20 billion economic stimulus package, in the low range of what had
been discussed earlier.
   Norman Robertson, an economic consultant based in Pittsburgh, said
Clinton faces problems no matter what he decides. If he opts to
aggressively attack the budget deficit, he risks quashing the
fledgling economic expansion. If he opts for too big a stimulus
package, he risks exacerbating the deficit.
   Military spending totaled $28.9 billion for the month and $74.8
billion for the first three months of the fiscal year, up 5.9 percent
from a year earlier.
   The net receipts to the Resolution Trust Corp., the S&L bailout
agency, were $1.4 billion for the month and $7.6 billion for the
quarter, down 19.6 percent from a year ago.
   Offsetting the rising deficit in December was an increase in income
tax payments, caused in part by wealthier individuals moving income
into 1992 from 1993 in anticipation of tax increases by the Clinton
administration.
   December's income tax payments from individuals totaled $51.2
billion, up 23 percent from a year earlier.
   As usual, the largest category of spending was interest on the $4.1
trillion national debt. It totaled $51.7 billion for the month and
$92.2 billion for the quarter, up 1.1 percent from a year earlier.
   Social Security spending was $49 billion for the month and $95.9
billion for the quarter, up 44 percent from last year.
   Spending by the Health and Human Services Department for Medicare
and Medicaid and other items excluding Social Security was $24.9
billion in December and $69.4 billion for the first three months, up
9.5 percent from the previous year.
				###

-- 
Dewey Coffman dewey@ctci.com  All opinions expressed are unrelated to reality.
CTC, Texas Inc.		          "That voodoo stuff don't do nothing for me."
"If you fail to plan, plan to fail" 	PANIC: waiting for a good idea.
"A fart is the cry of an imprisoned turd." muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au(Murray Chapman)
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