Economy’s Fiscal Performance Best In 15 Years

President Bill Clinton will soon have more to brag about on the campaign trail. The U.S. government finished its fiscal year on Sept. 30 with the lowest annual deficit in 15 years.

And the final figure, to be reported later this week or early next, could turn out to be even better than his administration’s official projections.

Efforts to cut spending, healthy revenues stemming from the economic expansion and new taxes on the affluent all helped improve the government’s finances. “It’s a combination of cutting the deficit and incredible revenue gains,” said Astrid Adolfson, an economist at MCM MoneyWatch in New York.

The Treasury is expected to report a September budget surplus of $30.9 billion, according to the average of nine forecasts in a Bloomberg Business News survey. That’s more than four times greater than the $7.2 billion surplus reported in September 1995 - and translates into an annual budget shortfall of about $113.1 billion, the lowest since fiscal 1981, when it was about $79 billion.

That’s even better than the $116.75 billion deficit the Clinton administration has been projecting for fiscal 1996, though the Congressional Budget Office was looking for the figure to be better still, at $109 billion.

Clinton - far ahead of Republican challenger Bob Dole in the polls - will likely report the good news ahead of the release of the formal Treasury budget statement, as he did last year.