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 April 2025, the seventh month of fiscal year (FY) 2025.
Current Federal Deficit
$258B
Federal Budget Surplus for April 2025
$210B
Federal Budget Surplus for April 2024
The federal government reported a surplus of $258 billion in April 2025, an increase of $49 billion from the $210 billion surplus recorded in April 2024. The government typically achieves surpluses each April due to the scheduled inflow of tax payments.
Spending in April 2025 was $25 billion more than in April of last year. Driving that growth was a $10 billion increase in Social Security outlays, as the program distributed retroactive payments based on legislation enacted in December. Additionally, Medicare and Medicaid outlays rose by $8 billion and $7 billion, respectively. Receipts were up by $74 billion in April 2025 compared to the year before, primarily due to individual income and payroll taxes increasing by $58 billion.
Cumulative Federal Deficit
$1,049B
Cumulative FY25 Deficit
$855B
Cumulative FY24 Deficit (through April 2024)
Through the first seven months of the fiscal year, the cumulative deficit was $194 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. Without that effect, the deficit for FY25 through the end of April would be $121 billion more than last year’s adjusted total.
For the first seven months of FY25, total outlays were $4.2 trillion, $340 billion higher than the same period in the previous year. Adjusting for the aforementioned shift, spending was $268 billion above the same period last year. That increase was driven mainly by three categories: Social Security spending was up by $70 billion, stemming from cost-of-living adjustments and the round of retroactive payments; net interest rose by $65 billion; and Medicare outlays increased by $41 billion. Partially offsetting those and other increases was a $66 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 seven months of FY25 were $146 billion above collections from a year ago, driven by a $110 billion increase in 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 seven months of 2025 relative to the prior year would have been larger.
National Debt
$28.7T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of April 2025
$27.4T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of April 2024
Fiscal year 2025 has moved beyond its halfway point, and the deficit so far is ahead of last year's amount. Federal debt is approaching its post-World War II high as a percentage of gross domestic product and is on track to continue rising. As the Administration and Congress work out the details of the reconciliation legislation, it is important that they “do no fiscal harm” to the already unsustainable outlook.