ECONOMIC

TABLE 15.—Federal Government receipts and expenditures, national income andproduct accounts, calendar years 1975—76[Billions of dollars]1976Receipt or expenditure category 1975January 1976budgetprojectioniActual'Federal Government receipts-286.5330.0330.6Personal tax and nontax receiptsCorporate tax accrualsIndirect business tax and nontax accruals-Contributions for social insurance125.742.623.994.3143.655.222.8108.4145.355.923.5105.8Federal Government expenditures357.8391.6388.9Purchases of goods and services.124.4135.4133.4National defense..NondefenseTransfer payments __ _To personsTo foreigners_Grants-in-aid to State and local governments ___Net interest paidSubsidies less current surplus of government enterprises.Surplus or deficit (-).84.340.1148.9145.83.154.423.56.5-71.288.746.7163.0159.23.859.528.65.1-61.688.245.2162.2159.03.260.227.55.6-58.3i January 1976 projected percent changes applied to revised 1975 data.* Preliminary.Note.—Detail may not add to totals because of rounding.Sources: Department of Commerce (Bureau of Economic Analysis) and Office of Management and Budget.The composition of Federal expenditures in 1976 continued the shift awayfrom defense and toward domestic programs that has been under way since1967. Defense purchases as a share of total spending were 23 percent in 1976,down from 48 percent in 1960. Conversely, transfer payments—now the largestsingle component of Federal spending—and grants-in-aid to State andlocal governments have grown markedly in recent years as a result of widercoverage, higher benefit payments, and new programs. These two categoriesaccounted for 57 percent of Federal expenditures in 1976, compared with32 percent in 1960.There was much discussion about the unexpected shortfall in Federalexpenditures in 1976, its relation to the slowing of real growth during theyear, and its implications for spending in 1977. Actual spending should becompared with the January projections presented in the 1977 Federal Budgetbecause the latter incorporated the Administration's plans and expectationsearly last year. Moreover a complete translation from the unified budget toNIPA concepts is readily available only for this set of estimates. On anNIPA basis the shortfall from the January projection for fiscal 1976 was 1.5percent of actual expenditures, a difference within the range of recent experience(see Table 14). Despite the fact that the underspending for the yearas a whole was neither exceptionally large nor unprecedented, it was concentratedin a short period and produced a rather sharp rise in the fullemploymentsurplus in the second quarter (see Table 18).71