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 February 2025, the fifth month of fiscal year (FY) 2025.
Current Federal Deficit
$307B
Federal Budget Deficit for February 2025
$296B
Federal Budget Deficit for February 2024
The federal government ran a deficit of $307 billion in February 2025, an increase of $11 billion from the deficit of $296 billion recorded in February 2024. However, because February 1 and March 1 fell on a Saturday in 2025, certain payments in both months were shifted into the previous month. Adjusting for those timing shifts, the February 2025 deficit would have been $15 billion greater than the same month in the previous year.
Spending in February 2025 was $36 billion more than in February last year, although the timing shifts slightly dampened that increase. Controlling for those adjustments, outlays were up by $40 billion compared to February 2024. Driving that growth in spending was a $15 billion increase in outlays associated with refundable tax credits (mostly for health insurance purchased through the marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act), a $7 billion increase in payments for interest on the national debt, and a $7 billion increase in Social Security spending. Receipts were up by $25 billion in February 2025 compared to the year before, with income taxes up by $15 billion, payroll taxes increasing by $5 billion, and collections of corporate receipts higher by $5 billion.
Cumulative Federal Deficit
$1,147B
Cumulative FY25 Deficit
$828B
Cumulative FY24 Deficit (through February 2024)
Through the five months, the fiscal year’s cumulative deficit was $318 billion above last year’s level. 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. Additionally, outlays for the first five months of FY25 were inflated by March 1 payments, which fell on a weekend, thereby shifting into February. Without those effects, the deficit for FY25 through the end of February would have been $1,063 billion, $162 billion more than last year’s adjusted total of $901 billion.
For the first five months of FY25, total outlays were $3.0 trillion, $355 billion higher than the same period in the previous year. Adjusting for the aforementioned shifts, spending was $199 billion above the same period last year. That increase was driven mainly by three categories: net interest rose by $46 billion; Social Security spending was up by $38 billion, mainly stemming from cost-of-living adjustments; and spending on national defense increased by $36 billion. Partially offsetting those and other increases was a $68 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 five months of FY25 were $37 billion above collections from a year ago, driven by a $55 billion increase in the category of individual income and payroll 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 five 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 February 2025
$27.3T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of February 2024
Fiscal year 2025 has gotten off to a bad start in terms of growth in the deficit. The federal debt is approaching its post-World War II high as a percentage of gross domestic product and is on track to continue rising rapidly, which is unsustainable. The new Administration and Congress must take action to put the nation on a more sustainable footing.