Well, It's Not as Bad as They Said They Expected

After the Weather Bureau predicts a seven-day heat wave, a revised forecast that the torrid spell will last only six days seems good news of a sort. In that not-as-bad-as-we-expected sense, President Kennedy had some good budget news to announce last week. Only "a few hours ago," he told reporters at his press conference, the Treasury sent him word that the budget deficit for fiscal 1963 (which ended June 30) was only $6.2 billion. That is another hefty deficit to run up in peacetime, but, as Kennedy pointed out with pride, it was $2.6 billion less than the $8.8 billion deficit the Administration predicted last January. He did not mention that back in January 1962 he had predicted a $500 million surplus for fiscal 1963.

The shrinkage of the 1963 deficit from $8.8 billion to $6.2 billion, Kennedy said, resulted largely from "the recent improvement in business conditions," which brought additional tax revenues into the Treasury. The President nicely turned that fact into an argument for a tax cut: "This demonstrates again the point which I emphasized in my tax message to the Congress: rising tax receipts and eventual elimination of budget deficits depend on a healthy and rapidly growing economy. The most urgent economic business before the nation is a prompt and substantial reduction and revision of fed eral income taxes in order to speed up our economic growth."

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