(Brett Rowland, The Center Square) The federal government spent $1.8 trillion more than it collected in tax revenue in fiscal year 2024, according to figures released Friday by U.S. Treasury Department.
Congress has run a deficit every year since 2001. In the past 50 years, the federal government has ended with a fiscal year-end budget surplus four times, most recently in 2001.
The deficit for fiscal 2024 was $1.8 trillion, or $138 billion higher than the prior year’s deficit. As a percentage of GDP, the deficit was 6.4%, an increase from 6.2% in fiscal 2023. The 2024 deficit is $196 billion lower than in 2023, excluding the effect of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Biden v. Nebraska regarding student loan programs, according to year-end data from the September 2024 Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government.
The fiscal year 2024 deficit was $76 billion below the baseline estimate of $1.91 trillion in the 2024 budget published in March, and $144 billion lower than the baseline estimate of $1.98 trillion in the Mid-Session Review, a supplemental update to the budget published in July
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said that is equal to borrowing about $5 billion a day, adding daily to the nation’s $35.76 trillion debt.
“We’re borrowing nearly double the amount we borrowed annually before the pandemic, and this is projected to grow indefinitely,” she said. “This is no way to run a country. In fact, the way we have been running the country is we don’t pass budgets; we don’t pay for new policies; we don’t address our major entitlement programs, which are facing insolvency; and we tolerate the two major presidential candidates competing over who can promise to give away more.”
In fiscal year 2024, the U.S. government spent nearly $900 billion on interest on the debt alone.
“That’s more than we spent on national defense, Medicare, and children at the federal level – just a truly astounding figure,” MacGuineas said. “The national debt is on track to reach a record share of the economy in just two years, a sobering milestone for both the next Congress and whoever wins the presidency in November.”
The next president will take over the nation’s $35.2 trillion in debt.
Congress has continued to spend money it doesn’t have despite warnings.
Earlier this month, credit-rating agency Moody’s sounded the alarm.
The International Monetary Fund warned in May that U.S. government spending and increasing national debt were not sustainable and could hurt the global economy.
In February, a Congressional watchdog told President Joe Biden and Congress that the federal government was on an “unsustainable long-term fiscal path.”
Moody’s projected growing deficits without significant changes.
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