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Show Federal Budget: No One Knows The federal budget is today so vast no one really knows how much the nation is spending and how much it needs. OFFICIALS at the Office of Management and Budget recently confirmed spending during the July-September quarter was running perhaps $8 billion less than anticipated. anticipat-ed. So many are spending this money, or can spend it, that officials at the bureau and Treasury really don't know how much that has been made available will be spent. ONE theory about the less-than-expected spending is that bureaucrats padded their requests this year, expecting sharp cuts, and really didn't need all they asked - and in some cases received. Another theory is that reduced inflation lowered, agencies' actual needs. Another is that politics entered en-tered into some decisions to withhold funds. ANOTHER is that many payments have merely been postponed, that defense contractors con-tractors especially have been unable to maintain anticipated anticipat-ed schedules. The intriguing point is that no one really knows why the federal government spent billions less in the July-September quarter than had been provided by Congress! The bureaucracy has grown so . large it is, to a degree, out of control. ' |