May 4, 1977
Page 13600
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a table, with explanatory text, be printed in the RECORD immediately after the table entitled "Explanation of $50 Billion Increase in Outlays Between Fiscal Year 1977 and Fiscal Year 1978."
There being no objection, the table and explanation were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Table omitted]
FISCAL STIMULUS IN THE FISCAL YEAR 1978 DEFICIT AND THE FISCAL YEAR 1977 DEFICIT
The unified budget is not precisely appropriate for analyzing the effects of federal receipts and expenditures on the economy. For this purpose the National Income Accounts (NIA) budget concepts and definitions are normally used instead. The unified budget and the NIA budget differ in four major respects:
(1) The NIA budget adds certain items to both receipts and expenditures ("grosses up") to make them consistent with national income account definitions. This increases both NIA receipts and NIA expenditures, but does not affect the deficit.
(2) The NIA budget excludes lending and financial transactions, which are exchanges of assets and liabilities rather than current income or production.
(3) The NIA budget estimates business taxes on an accrual basis, and personal taxes on a payments basis, while the unified budget records receipts at the time the cash is collected.
(4) The NIA budget excludes bonuses on OCS land leases from receipts. These are treated as a transfer of assets, because the payments generally are not included in expenses in calculating book profits under current corporate accounting practice.
When these adjustments are made to the unified budget totals for fiscal years 1977 and 1978, the estimated NIA deficit falls by 66.5 billion as shown in the preceding table.