US Budget Deficit Expands By $139 Billion On 10% Spending Hike: Treasury
The U.S. government faces a $626 billion budget deficit amassed from October 2012 to May 2013, with $1.8 trillion in revenues outmatched by $2.4 trillion in spending, the U.S. Treasury said on Wednesday.
That compares to a $1.09 trillion fiscal deficit faced at the end of fiscal year 2012, where from October 2011 to October 2012 the federal government raised $2.44 trillion and spent $3.5 trillion.
For May of this year the budget deficit rose by $139 billion, with a 10 percent spending increase from a month's worth of spending in May 2012. But in the same period last year, from October 2011 to May 2012, the government raised $1.5 trillion but spent $2.4 trillion. That means that for this fiscal year so far, they've raised more revenue but spent the same amount.
Over the last several months, spending on Social Security, Medicare and other domestic items has tended to outweigh, often by double, defense spending, according to Treasury charts.
The government spent $24.3 billion on interest payments for the U.S. national debt, which now exceeds $16 trillion, in May 2013, data showed.
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