US government ran a $14B deficit in December
Stan Collender, founder of “The Budget Guy” blog, says that President Trump’s tax law is to blame for the skyrocketing U.S. national deficit.
The U.S. federal government posted a $14 billion deficit in December, a decline of about $10 billion compared to the year-ago period, according to Treasury Department data released on Wednesday.
Revenue for the month sank as a result of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which slashed taxes both for individuals and corporations. Since the fiscal year began in October, the government has racked up about a $319 billion deficit, compared to $225 billion in the previous fiscal year.
Interest payments on the public debt also increased by about 16 percent.
Spending, meanwhile, also declined to $326 billion, a 7 percent drop from the same time last year, as outlays fell for the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The data was released about a month late as a result of the 35-day partial government shutdown that began at the tailend of December.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) has previously warned that the U.S. deficit -- which is already at a six-year high -- could climb as high as $1 trillion by the end of 2019.
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The nonpartisan public policy organization also warned that an economic boost seen throughout 2018 is likely to weaken. It projected that the economy will grow by 3 percent in the entirety of 2018 and 2.8 percent in 2019, before cooling to somewhere between 1.6 and 1.9 percent per year for the remainder of the decade.