There was more bad budget news from the federal government on Friday, as the Treasury Department reported that the federal government ran a deficit of $76.9 billion in the month of July, with federal revenues down from a year ago, while government spending was up, keeping Fiscal Year 2017 headed in the direction of the largest yearly budget deficit since 2012.
Adding up all the red ink accumulated so far this year, the federal yearly deficit for 2017 stands at $683 billion, already ahead of the total for all of 2016, when it reached $665.8 billion.
For the first ten months of this fiscal year, Uncle Sam has run up $127 billion more in deficits than at this same point a year ago, when the yearly budget deficit stood at $566 billion.
The current fiscal year ends on September 30.
The budget figures also continued a trend since the approval of a major tax cut plan at the end of this year, as revenues in July were again down from the same month a year ago.
Since withholding tax tables were changed in February to account for higher take home pay - and less in taxes withheld by the government - revenues have been lower on a month-to-month comparison in each month except for April.
Individual income tax receipts - while down from last July - are still running ahead of last year. Corporate income taxes are well behind a year ago, as just $4.3 billion in corporate taxes were collected last month, running overall almost $70 billion behind the same point a year ago.
While total revenues coming in to Uncle Sam declined by $7 billion in July, spending by the federal government was up $28 billion from a year earlier.
In June, the White House estimated the budget deficit for this year would be $890 billion, and would go over $1 trillion for the three years after that.
Credit: Jamie Dupree
Credit: Jamie Dupree
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