Current Federal Debt and Deficit
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Every month the U.S. Treasury releases data on the federal budget, including the current deficit or surplus. The following contains budget data for March 2025, the sixth month of fiscal year (FY) 2025.
Current Federal Deficit
$161B
Federal Budget Deficit for March 2025
$237B
Federal Budget Deficit for March 2024
The federal government ran a deficit of $161 billion in March 2025, a decrease of $76 billion from the deficit of $237 billion recorded in March 2024. However, March 1 fell on a Saturday in 2025, causing certain payments to be shifted into the previous month. Adjusting for that timing shift, the March 2025 deficit would have been $7 billion greater than the same month in the previous year.
Spending in March 2025 was $40 billion less than in March of last year, although that decrease is entirely attributable to the timing shift. Controlling for that adjustment, outlays were up by $43 billion compared to March 2024. Driving that growth was a $22 billion increase in outlays for Social Security, as the program distributed $15 billion in retroactive payments related to legislation enacted at the end of last year. Additionally, net interest payments on the national debt were up by $14 billion, and Medicare outlays rose by $12 billion. Receipts were up by $36 billion in March 2025 compared to the year before, with income taxes up by $24 billion, payroll taxes increasing by $6 billion, and collections of corporate receipts higher by $3 billion.
Cumulative Federal Deficit
$1.3T
Cumulative FY25 Deficit
$1.1T
Cumulative FY24 Deficit (through March 2024)
Through the first six months of the fiscal year, the cumulative deficit was $242 billion above the corresponding period the year before. However, October 1, 2023, fell on a weekend, thereby causing certain federal payments to be shifted into the previous fiscal year (FY23) and artificially reducing the deficit in FY24. Without that effect, the deficit for FY25 through the end of March would have been $171 billion more than last year’s adjusted total.
For the first six months of FY25, total outlays were $3.6 trillion, $315 billion higher than the same period in the previous year. Adjusting for the aforementioned shift, spending was $242 billion above the same period last year. That increase was driven mainly by three categories: Social Security spending was up by $60 billion, stemming from cost-of-living adjustments and the retroactive payments; net interest rose by $60 billion; and Medicare outlays increased by $32 billion. Partially offsetting those and other increases was a $69 billion decrease in outlays by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation related to the resolution of bank failures that occurred last year.
Revenues through the first six months of FY25 were $72 billion above collections from a year ago, driven by a $55 billion increase in the category of individual income taxes. Receipts were boosted last year by deferred collections of payments from taxpayers in locations that suffered natural disasters. If not for those postponed payments (about $35 billion), the difference in revenues in the first six months of 2025 relative to the prior year would have been larger.
National Debt
$28.8T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of March 2025
$27.4T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of March 2024
Fiscal year 2025 has reached its halfway point, and its deficit is tracking well ahead of last year's. The federal debt is approaching its post-World War II high as a percentage of gross domestic product and is likely to continue rising rapidly, if no legislative changes are made. The new Administration and Congress must take action to put the nation on a more sustainable footing.