The Treasury Department announced Friday that the U.S. budget deficit increased to $1.833 trillion for fiscal 2024, the largest since the COVID era, as interest on the federal debt surpassed $1 trillion for the first time and spending increased for the military, health care, and Social Security retirement program.
The deficit for fiscal 2023 was $1.695 trillion, up $138 billion, or 8%, from the year-end September 30 deficit.
After the fiscal 2020 and fiscal 2021 deficits of $3.132 trillion and $2.772 trillion, respectively, caused by pandemic relief, it was the third-largest government deficit in American history.
After President Joe Biden’s student loan program was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, $330 billion in expenses were reversed, lowering the fiscal 2023 deficit. If this anomaly hadn’t occurred, it would have exceeded $2 trillion.
Ahead of the presidential election on November 5, Vice President Kamala Harris may have trouble proving she would be a better fiscal steward than Republican opponent Donald Trump due to the significant fiscal 2024 budget imbalance of 6.4% of GDP, up from 6.2% the previous year.
Trump’s ideas would add $7.5 trillion in new debt, more than twice as much as Harris’s $3.5 trillion, according to a fiscal think group called the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Laptops 1000The robust expansion of the U.S. economy and the Biden administration’s investments in innovative manufacturing, clean energy, and infrastructure were highlighted by White House budget director Shalanda Young.
“This Administration has done this while maintaining a commitment to fiscal responsibility by ensuring the wealthiest among us and large corporations pay their fair share and cutting wasteful spending on special interests,” Young said in a statement, alluding to Biden and Harris’s proposals to increase taxes on private industry.
The 2024 fiscal year saw a record $4.919 trillion in U.S. receipts, up 11%, or $479 billion, from the previous year due to growth in corporate and individual non-withheld tax collections. In fiscal 2024, spending increased by $617 billion, or 10%, to $6.752 trillion.
