Treasury Confirms Calendar Year 2022 Deficit Tops $1.4 Trillion

The Treasury Department released the final Monthly Treasury Statement of calendar year 2022 today, confirming that the United States borrowed $1.4 trillion last year, including $85 billion in December. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made a similar estimate earlier this week.

The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Today’s Treasury report makes it official: we borrowed over $1.4 trillion in 2022. That figure is staggering considering the worst of the pandemic and the accompanying recession have been over for a long while now. We should not be borrowing $4 billion a day, an apparent debt addiction that is harmful to the economy and the budget.

At the same time, inflation continues to run at its fastest pace in 41 years. While the cooldown in today’s CPI numbers is welcome news, inflation is still one of the biggest headaches in the current economy, and excessive borrowing makes it worse.  It’s long past time for Congress and the President to work together to help the Federal Reserve control inflation and bring our budget back to a responsible path.

As lawmakers return to Washington and begin to figure out the agenda of the 118^th Congress, now is the right time to pivot back towards getting our fiscal house in order. That starts with a responsible budget resolution, agreeing not to add any new debt, raising the debt ceiling, and putting in place a plan to reduce or stabilize the debt over the coming years. The latest deficit numbers serve as a reminder that it is high time to make these changes.

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