Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Budget Deficit July 2012

The CBO reports in the 2012 and 2011 Budget deficits for the nine months of each year, through July.
Note that we have had a small improvement at best. The CBO states:

CBO estimates that the Treasury Department will report a deficit of $975 billion for the first 10 months of fiscal year 2012, $125 billion less than the $1.1 trillion deficit incurred through July 2011. Through the end of July, revenues were about 6 percent higher this year than at the same point last year; outlays were about the same in both years. Because October 1, 2011, occurred on a Saturday, roughly $31 billion in payments that would have been made in 2012 were made in 2011. In the absence of that shift, the deficit so far this year would have been about $93 billion smaller than last year’s figure.

Frankly things are just not getting any better. Medicare is up very slightly, amazing given more subscribers and price inflation, SSI is up 5.8% which is more people collecting. Unemployment is down, but likely to increase. Between Defense and Other we have $1.5T or half of the budget.