The giving spree.

"We sell as much on the last day of September as we do in the whole month of January," M. Dendy Young, the chief executive of GTSI Corp., recently told Anitha Reddy of The Washington Post. What's the explanation? GTSI sells computers and other high-tech office equipment to the federal government, and, as we pointed out in the third issue of this magazine, April 1969, the time for vendors to get government contracts is toward the end of the fiscal year. Back then it was June 30, so the article was called "The Spring Spending Spree." It's now September 30.

This means that toward the end of summer, government agencies begin to panic about the unspent money they have on hand. If they don't use it by the end of the fiscal year, they lose it. A mad rush ensues to buy things before the Sept. 30 deadline. Ms. Reddy's is the first account of this practice I've seen in the press since our article appeared 34 years ago, so I congratulate her. At the same time I regret that neither she nor her editors seem aware of the ultimate cause of what is now the September spending spree. It is that agency officials dread the moment that a member of Congress will ask why they are requesting more money for next year when they couldn't spend all their appropriations for the current one.