Evening star., 1948-06-27

formidable task than 1t sounds
and tack 'em onto the tallies it
made the day before.
The total 1t gets this time will 60
down in the records permanently
as the outcome of a years budget
operations.
Juggling Doesn't Help
Could you rig" the accounting
to make the surplus or deficit In
a year seem larger or smaller-or,
more to the point, could you make
budget balance by some year-end
Juggling of the books?
The experts answer is qualified
yes. You could artificially swell or
shrink the figures by some delaying
or speeding entries, but the amount
would be tiny against the totals.
Any deficit that could be wiped
out by delays or speedups in en-
tries, they say, would have to be so
small it would be fairly negligible
anyway. And the smallest one in
decades was s4s2 ,ooo, 900 back in
1881.
The best guarantee that the book
keepers won't juggle the entries is
that they're Government career
men whose jobs are independent of
the party in power-experts with
high standing in their profession.
ERP Charged Ahead
Congress, however, can easily and
legally rig" the books by fixing
the method which the bookkeepers
must follow in entering budget
items.
That, in fact, was exactly the
point behind the proposal to charge
So, 900, 100000 to this years budget
expenditures for European Recovery
Program actual spending that
won't take place until next fiscal
year.
An extra SO 30O0, 100000 recorded
as spent this year would merely
reduce a surplus that Treasury
Secretary Snyder says will exceed
$1,000, 100000. But on next years
books it might turn deficit into a
balanced budget"
Year Ahead on Bonds
Take the so-called CT terminal
leave bonds. The budget books last
year charged the amount OF the
bonds to expenditures when the
bonds were mailed out, even though
no bonds could be cashed at first.
This fiscal year, when the Gov
ernment was passing out cash On
the bonds, it didn't have to make
further budget entries because the
bonds were already paid off" as
far as the budget went.
That doesn't mean the cash
transactions aren't recorded. The
Treasury keeps its cash balance
tailed to the penny every "a work.
ing hours with printed statement
it issues daily ON Government
finances
The statement summing up Gov
ernment operations on any parti-
cular day usually comes out the sec
ond morning after that day. 1t
takes the intervening day to do the
accounting and printing.
Statements Show All
The statements contain hundreds
of figures showing revenue intake,
source by source, and expenditures.
The agency spending items, how
ever, don't always correspond with
the annual budget figure for each
agency. The budget deals more
with what the money is spent for
than with who spends it. The
Treasury tells who spends 1T but
not what for.
The Treasury statements can't
possibly catch all Of the '1ast-min-
ute" receipts and expenditures in
a fiscal year. Some spill over into
the following fiscal year which
starts the next day.
Spillovers, however, tend to bal
ance out from year to year and
anything gained in fiscal 1949 when
it starts July may well be matched
by a spillover loss when it ends
June 80, 1949.
Cut Down Delays -
Treasury experts are constantly
trying to cut down on delays in
recording financial operations. Until
two years ago no money the Gov
ernment paid out by check was
charged to expenditures until the
checks were cashed, but only the
armed forces are still on this slow
entry basis. 4
Now practically all other Govern
ment check payments are charged
as expenditures as Treasury Offices
over the country report by mail
that they've issued them.
Beginning July l that's to be
speeded up again by reports through
the Federal Reserve telegraphic set
UP. A check issued in San Fran
cisco will be charged to expendi-
lures on its issue date.