68 THE FISCAL PROBLEM IN MISSOURI 
is of a nature similar to that of Missouri and does not repre- 
sent outstanding indebtedness that must be liquidated on 
any given date or dates, the statistics of floating debt are 
not entirely comparable. For this reason the discussion 
will be confined to the current debt. At the end of the fiscal 
year 1928, only one state in the group, Wisconsin, had a 
more favorable current debt position than Missouri. Wis- 
consin had no current debt whatever at the end of any of the 
years included in the table. Of the remaining states, Kansas 
had the smallest current debt at the end of the fiscal year 
1928, and Kentucky, the highest. The latter state in recent 
years has had a larger volume of current debt than any other 
state in the group, but its current debt has not constituted a 
problem of any significance for the reason that its net bonded 
debt has either been negligible in amount or a minus quan- 
tity.t 
FuncrioNAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE STATE DEBT 
It has been pointed out that net bonded debt differs from 
total bonded debt outstanding by the amount of the sinking 
fund assets. So long as a state has any sinking fund assets 
it is not possible to make a functional distribution on the 
basis of net bonded debt, for thesinking fund assets represent 
a fund that under ordinary conditions is regarded as applic- 
able to reducing debt in general and not any particular part 
of it. Accordingly, when a functional distribution is desired, 
funded or bonded debt outstanding must be used. Also, 
since floating debt is ordinarily for an intermediate time 
period, it should be included. 
Table 21 shows the funded and floating debt? of Missouri, 
as of the end of given years, classified according to the pur- 
pose for which it was incurred. At the end of 1918 Missouri 
had outstanding only $2.4 million of bonded debt, which 
had been incurred for building purposes, and the floating 
debt consisted of $4.4 million of school and seminary cer- 
tificates of indebtedness. General government buildings in 
1 Kentucky's sinking fund assets in a number of years exceeded the bonded debt 
obligations outstanding. See footnotes to Table 18, p. 63. 
2 The amount shown under “ Combined or Unreported Purposes” is the only item 
classified as floating debt.