Letter to the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee About Budget Deficits.

[Released April 22, 1930. Dated April 18, 1930]

My dear Mr. Senator:

I thought you would like to know that a re-examination of our fiscal situation for the next year by the Director of the Budget shows that upon the indicated income of the Government and the expenditures to which the Government is already committed through budget proposals and legislation which has been completed, we are faced with a deficit of some twenty or thirty millions of dollars. This, of course, is not as yet a very material sum, but it is obvious that any further large amounts of expenditure will jeopardize the primary duty of the Government, that is, to hold expenditures within our income.

Something over one hundred and twenty-five acts have been passed by either the Senate or the House or favorably reported by different committees, which would authorize an additional expenditure of three hundred or three hundred fifty million dollars next year. A good many of these proposals are, of course, for comparatively small sums, and some of them are necessary for the functioning of the Government, but I know you will agree with me that there is cause for real alarm in the situation as we can not contemplate any such deficit.

I am writing a similar note to Representative Wood.

Yours faithfully,

HERBERT HOOVER