The U.S. budget deficit climbed to a record $2.8 trillion in the first 10 months of this fiscal year, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday.
The federal government rang up a $63 billion deficit in July, which is an improvement from $864 billion total in June. In July, the government collected a record of $563 billion in taxes – after extending the filing deadline to July 15. Tax receipts are down by just one percent compared with 2019.
Republicans lawmakers have expressed concern over the gap between what the U.S. spends and what it takes in – though they showed little care for it when they passed Trump’s $1 trillion tax cut in 2017 with no pay-fors. Economists warn that the size of the deficit is expected to be enormous as the coronavirus crisis has left millions of Americans without a job and caused countless businesses to close.
The Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said it was “not the time” to be concerned about the deficit.
