jonny5
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2012
- Messages
- 27,581
- Reaction score
- 4,664
- Location
- Republic of Florida
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Libertarian
Monthly Budget Review: Summary for Fiscal Year 2020
In fiscal year 2020, the federal budget deficit totaled $3.1 trillion—more than triple the shortfall recorded in fiscal year 2019. The deficit in 2020 was equal to 14.9 percent of GDP, up from 4.6 percent in 2019 and 3.8 percent in 2018.
www.cbo.gov
-6.5 trillion in outlays, up 2 trillion from 2019
-3.42 trillion in revenue, down 40 billion from 2019
-3.13 trillion deficit, up 2.1 trillion from 2019
Obviously pandemic spending was the major reason for the outlays increasing:
+600bn for PPP
+271bn in stimulus checks
+141bn for CARES act relief fund
+110bn for public health programs
+125 for Medicare expansions related to CARES act
+500bn in unemployment benefits
+hundreds of billions more in all depts for other related costs
But, that still leaves another trillion in excess spending from pre-pandemic, mostly from health care spending. Revenue, even with tax cuts for the rich and the pandemic, remained about the same. So, as always our fiscal problems are spending related.
Pre pandemic spending, we spent almost every dollar of revenue (3.1T) on "human resources", which is social security, health care, welfare, veterans. We spend 15% (~700bn) on national defense, which means we borrow about half of it. And then borrow another 700bn for every other function of govt. Energy, parks, transportation, foreign affairs, justice, administration, etc.
As usual, no one running for President or Congress really cared about the deficit, the debt, the size of the budget. None of this appears in the DNC platform, and Biden wants to collect more revenue and spend it, plus more, not reduce the deficit or pay off any debt. Congress still cant manage to pass an actual budget or normal appropriations, so we are 6 days from another shut down, which means another continuing res.
But 21/22 budget season is upon us again, so we'll see if this congress/president does any better.
