The US budget deficit has already exceeded $ 2.71 trillion

The report says the deficit for the first 11 months of this fiscal year is 9.9% lower than for the same period last year.

The fiscal year ends on September 30 and The Congressional Budget Office predicted a deficit of $ 3 trillion, which would be just below the record deficit of $ 3.13 trillion recorded last year.

Last year’s deficit was more than double the previous record of $ 1.4 trillion set in 2009 under the Obama administration, when the government was spending heavily to fight the deep recession after the 2008 financial crisis.

In those 11 months of this fiscal year, government revenues amounted to $ 3.3 trillion, marking a 17.7 percent increase over last year, driven by the economic rebound after the recession and which has allowed millions of people to return to work.

Public spending reached $ 6.21 trillion. Disbursements this year and past reflect the trillions of dollars spent to prevent the economy from sliding into a prolonged recession by providing individual support payments, improved unemployment benefits, and billions of dollars in non-repayable loans to individuals. small enterprises. .

The budget deficit in August stood at $ 170.6 billion, down 14.7% from August 2020, when the deficit reached $ 200 billion.

The Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, he asks Congress to extend the government’s debt limits because it will lack the leeway to be able to continue fulfilling its obligations for the first time in history.

In a letter to leaders on Capitol Hill last week, Yellen said he hoped to exhaust by next month available “extraordinary measures” used to prevent the United States from reaching the government’s borrowing limit.

The measures mainly involve draining federal employee pension funds to make room for more loans until Congress raises the current limit of $ 2.84 trillion or lifts the limit.

Closely related to three other outstanding issues is the need to extend the debt ceiling: the need to approve a pension funding bill at the start of the new fiscal year on October 1 and two government bills. massive infrastructure.