“Does Not Appear Sustainable”: The US Budget Deficit Is Unexpectedly Soaring Again And It’s About To Get Much Worse

It was supposed to be a year when the normalization of the record US budget deficit blowout from the covid collapse continued; it has ended up being anything but.

Author: Tyler Durden

As the US Treasury revealed in its latest Monthly Treasury Statement, in the first six months of the fiscal year ended March 31, the US fiscal picture is once again deteriorating rapidly, on both revenue and spending. As shown in the chart below, gross revenues declined by 4% to $2.048 trillion from $2.121 trillion in the same period a year earlier, while spending over the same period soared by $358 billion to $3.149 trillion from $2.790 trillion. 

Added across, in March the US deficit soared by $378 billion – the biggest monthly deficit since September 22, the last month of the previous fiscal year, and for the first six months of 2023 the total US deficit jumped to $1.10 trillion, up a massive 65% compared to the year prior. More shocking is that this year’s deficit is not that much lower compared to the record trailing 6 month total hit in fiscal 2021 when the deficit was $1.7 trillion for the first six months of fiscal 2021, a time when helicopter money was flowing into the economy at a record pace and setting the stage for the explosive surge in inflation that lingers to this day.

This unexpected surge in the deficit is creating everything from ripple effects in the political arena where the issue of raising the debt ceiling is about to become quite jarring especially now that the US has resumed its “drunken sailor” spending ways; to shockwaves when it comes to calculations for when the Treasury default X-date will hate, as we explained earlier.

So what’s behind this sudden deficit explosion, and why is it on such a higher path halfway through FY 2023? Here are the 4 main factors as explained by BofA’s Mark Cabana:

1. First, the omnibus budget bill passed last December increased discretionary spending by roughly 9% compared to FY2022. There were increases for both defense and nondefense spending of roughly 10% and 8% respectively.

2. Second, cost of living adjustment increases to social security (8.7% specifically) has contributed to the 5% y/y increase in social welfare payments this year compared to last.

3. Third, interest costs have ballooned owing to the Fed’s aggressive hiking cycle and the massive amount of debt accumulated from pandemic related fiscal stimulus.

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