Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin with the national debt signage in the background.
Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call | fake pictures
The federal government incurred the largest monthly budget deficit in history in June, as spending on programs to combat the coronavirus recession exploded as millions of job losses reduced tax revenue.
The Treasury Department reported Monday that the deficit reached $ 864 billion last month, an amount of red ink that exceeds most annual deficits in the nation’s history and is above the previous monthly deficit of $ 738. billion in April. That amount was also tied to the trillions of dollars Congress has provided to cushion the impact of widespread closures that occurred in an effort to limit the spread of the viral pandemic.
During the first nine months of this budget year, which began on October 1, the deficit totaled $ 2.74 trillion, also a record for that period. That puts the country on track to hit the year-long $ 3.7 trillion deficit that has been forecast by the Congressional Budget Office.
That total would exceed the previous annual record of $ 1.4 trillion set in 2009 when the government was spending heavily to pull the country out of the recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis.
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