WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The December budget deficit was just $13.5 billion, the Treasury Department said Wednesday and after the usual apples-to-apples adjustment, was $45 billion in the red, heading toward what the Congressional Budget Office says will be about $900 billion by the end of the fiscal year.
So while the official number is 10% narrower a deficit than a year earlier, in reality it’s larger. Adjusted December of last year was in deficit by$45 billion versus the year earlier’s adjusted $4 billion.
What’s become the most eye-catching numbers in the Treasury’s monthly report on government receipts and outlays is the disparity between individual and corporate tax returns. Continuing the pattern since the tax cut started hitting the numbers is the way individual tax receipts have declined only a little, 1% so far this fiscal year, compared to how corporate taxes have declined a lot, 18%.
Another trend that has been helping the deficit from being worse, the slackening in government so-called emergency spending, continued in December.
However interest on the public debt was up 16%, to $97 billion for the single month. Year-to-date it’s up 12% and it’s that number that deficit hawks say will someday strangle the U.S. economy if Congress doesn’t implement spending and taxing reforms.
The point where market worriers start to anticipate problems is something no one knows. The CBO forecasts the annual deficit will add $1 trillion a year to the national debt beginning in fiscal 2022 and will clock in as much as 4.7% of GDP, “well above average over the past 50 years.”