The U.S. federal budget deficit jumped 26% in November from a year earlier to $314 billion, a record for the month and the highest since March, the Treasury Department said on Tuesday, driven by sharply higher interest costs and other outlays.

Federal revenues in November rose $23 billion to $275 billion, a 9% increase from a year earlier.

Outlays jumped $88 billion to $589 billion, 18% higher than a year earlier. Interest payments on U.S. government debt accounted for $25 billion of the increase.

The outlay for interest on the debt in November, at $80 billion, surpassed the $66 billion outlay for national defense, which was up $8 billion from a year earlier. The outlay for the government-run Medicare health insurance program also rose by $8 billion, to $93 billion, while the outlay for the government-run Medicaid program for the poor and disabled climbed $2 billion to $50 billion.

TFW your interest payments approach medicare spending

The weighted average interest rate on the $26 trillion of outstanding Treasury securities rose to 3.10% last month from 2.22% in November of last year.

Seems nice in pflp-octoplushie sense, if fed won't drop interest rates in the next year, libertarian bugbear about deficits will come closer to fruition

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Rich people who disproportionately benefit from the system should pay a disproportionate amount of taxes - not because the government needs billionaires to fund their spending, but because the government can do that and they want to do that and they don’t want the billionaires to have excessive influence over the people.

    uhh what bourgeois dictatorship gives a shit about that?

    • Kaplya
      ·
      11 months ago

      Obviously this wouldn’t work in a bourgeois society, but that is still how fiat money works and when used properly, it is a very powerful tool to shape the specific socio-economic policies the government wants.