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 December 2024, the third month of fiscal year (FY) 2025.
Current Federal Deficit
$87B
Federal Budget Deficit for December 2024
$129B
Federal Budget Deficit for December 2023
The federal government ran a deficit of $87 billion in December 2024, a decrease of $43 billion from the deficit of $129 billion recorded in December 2023. However, because December 1, 2024 fell on a weekend and December payments were boosted in both years because January 1 is a holiday, adjusting the spending totals would decrease outlays for December 2023 but increase them in December 2024. Adjusting for those timing shifts, the December 2024 deficit would be $36 billion greater than the same month in the previous year.
Spending in December 2024 was $18 billion less than in December last year, although the decrease is entirely attributable to the timing shifts. Controlling for those adjustments, outlays were actually up by $61 billion compared to December 2023. Driving that underlying growth in spending was a $14 billion increase in payments for interest on the national debt, a $13 billion increase in outlays for Medicare, and a $7 billion increase in Social Security spending. Receipts were up $25 billion in December 2024 compared to the year before, with income taxes up by $33 billion, while corporate receipts were down by $7 billion and payroll taxes down $4 billion.
Cumulative Federal Deficit
$711B
Cumulative FY25 Deficit
$510B
Cumulative FY24 Deficit (through December 2024)
Through the first quarter, the fiscal year’s cumulative deficit was $201 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 those effects, the deficit for FY25 through the end of December would be $680 billion, $126 billion more than the corresponding total for last year.
For the first three months of FY25, total outlays were $1.8 trillion, $176 billion higher than the same period in the previous year. Adjusting for the aforementioned shifts, spending was $101 billion above the same period last year. That increase was driven mainly by three categories: net interest rose by $26 billion; Social Security spending was up by $23 billion, mainly stemming from cost-of-living adjustments; and spending by the Environmental Protection Agency increased by $21 billion, primarily for grants related to clean energy. 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 three months of FY25 were $25 billion below collections from a year ago, mainly due to a decline in collections of individual and corporate income taxes, which were boosted last year by deferred payments from taxpayers in locations that suffered natural disasters. If not for those postponed payments (about $70 billion), revenues in the first three months of 2025 would have been greater than last year.
National Debt
$28.7T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of December 2024
$26.8T
Debt Held by the Public at the end of December 2023
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 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.