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.