By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The government reported a budget surplus of $32.7 billion in December, the Treasury Department said yesterday.
The bounty in the third month of the 2001 fiscal year was slightly smaller than the $33.1 billion surplus reported for the same month a year earlier.
December's performance was in line with the $32 billion surplus the Congressional Budget Office expected and the $34 billion private analysts were forecasting.
In December, spending totaled $167.8 billion and revenues came to $200.5 billion.
In the first three months of the budget year, which began Oct. 1, the government reported a deficit of $2.3 billion, with spending of $463.6 billion and revenues of $461.3 billion. That compares with a $20.3 billion shortfall reported for the first three months of fiscal 2000.
Individual income tax payments in December totaled $83.5 billion, down from $94.5 billion in December 1999. Payments from corporate taxes came to $51.3 billion, up from $44.9 billion.
The biggest spending categories in December were: Social Security, $40 billion; Health and Human Services Department programs, $35.4 billion; military spending, $28 billion; and interest on the public debt, $19.5 billion.
For all of fiscal year 2000, which ended Sept. 30, the government, helped by a booming economy, posted a record $237 billion surplus.
It was the third consecutive year of surplus, which has not occurred since the late 1940s, and represented a dramatic turnaround from fiscal year 1992, when the government registered a record deficit of $290.4 billion.
President Clinton in his last budget document predicted the government will post another record surplus of $256 billion in fiscal 2001 and a 10-year surplus of $5 trillion bounty from 2002-2011. But the Bush administration had accused Clinton of using artificially high estimates of economic growth for the next two years, and projections for the more distant future that are too low.
