CBO Estimates $1.4 Trillion Deficit For First 9 Months of Fiscal Year

In the first nine months of fiscal year 2023, the United States borrowed $1.4 trillion, with a $225 billion deficit in June, according to the latest Monthly Budget Review from the Congressional Budget Office. The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Three-quarters into the fiscal year and we’re borrowing an astounding $5.1 billion per day. If that isn’t a sign that we need a wake-up call, maybe it should be the fact that the deficit for this fiscal year is now larger than all of last year's deficit – and there’s still three months to go.

We saw a brief glimpse of hope last month with the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. We need to build off of the success in passing bipartisan deficit reduction, and we ought to do it as quickly as possible. A $1.4 trillion deficit for the first nine months of this fiscal year is only the tip of the iceberg of the fiscal trouble that is to come.

Congress and the President should start working together to take a hard look at the federal budget and figure out what we should prioritize and what we need to pare back. A bipartisan fiscal commission would be a great way to do this. It would offer policymakers an opportunity to take the entirety of the budget – including Social Security, Medicare, and revenues, among everything else – and steer clear of the demagoguing we’ve seen from political leaders on all of these issues.

With unsustainable borrowing, rising interest costs, and looming insolvency of the trust funds that support some of our nation’s most valued programs, the outlook for our fiscal health has been in decline for far too long. We need to turn the tide and work towards further reducing deficits and putting the national debt on a downward, sustainable course.

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For more information, please contact Kim McIntyre, Director of Media Relations, at mcintyre@crfb.org.