A group of conservatives has vowed to slow business in the House until Mr. Some conservatives say that’s too timid and blame Mr. Those cuts should hit in fiscal 2024 and don’t show up in Treasury’s numbers for the first eight months of fiscal 2023.ĬBO says the deal means the government’s debt will rise a bit more slowly, reaching $45.2 trillion rather than $46.7 trillion in 2033. President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy struck a deal to extend the government’s borrowing power until after next year’s elections while making trims to spending. Yet April, usually the biggest month for revenue with Americans’ tax payments due, was so disappointing that the date for the government to run out of maneuvering room got bumped up to early June. Budget gurus originally thought Congress would have until the late summer to raise the government’s borrowing limit. The plunging revenue was responsible for forcing the debt ceiling fight on Capitol Hill. Actual revenue is down $380 billion so far this year. Those projections were made while CBO was forecasting only a slight drop in revenue this year, falling $82 billion to reach $4.82 trillion. It will top the $2 trillion mark again in 2030 and flirt with $3 trillion by 2033. The next year, 2021, wasn’t much better, ending with a $2.77 trillion deficit.ĬBO says the government will run annual trillion-dollar deficits for the rest of this decade. The record deficit was set in 2020, when Congress opened the spending floodgates amid the pandemic and ended up $3.13 trillion in arrears. The last time the government ran an annual surplus was in 2001. Defense was $66 billion, and welfare benefits amounted to $64 billion. Federal health and Medicare accounts combined for $153 billion more. Social Security remains the single largest spending item, at $116 billion last month. In May, the government collected $307 billion but spent $548 billion, leaving a one-month deficit of $240 billion. So far, every month this fiscal year has been worse than last year.Īpril, usually the best month for the government, brought a $102 billion surplus compared with $373 billion last year. The government usually experiences some good months and some bad months in a given fiscal year. “These deficits are the predictable result of retirement-driven Social Security and Medicare costs, the Biden spending spree, and rising interest rates on the federal debt,” he said. He said the problem lies on the spending side. This year they will be 9.6% of GDP, which Mr. Income taxes exceeded 10% of gross domestic product for the first time ever. Biden made in his 2023 budget, and four more months of pain are ahead.īrian Riedl, a budget expert at the Manhattan Institute, said tax revenue was unusually high last year thanks to inflation. Indeed, it has already reached the full-year projection that Mr. The government ended the last fiscal year with a $1.38 trillion deficit, and this year’s figure is rapidly approaching that.

Federal deficit by president