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

  • Kaplya@hexbear.netEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    Not only that, the federal/central government that creates the money can always pay off whatever financial hole the local government is in. Let’s say you have a state government that hasn’t been able to keep up with its finances (maybe because it is underdeveloped, or maybe there had been a natural disaster that wrecked the local economy), the federal government can always plug that deficit without having to take away from the richer states.

    A better analogy is like two friends playing poker. If you are a better player than me, you will probably win more games against me throughout the night, and at some point I’m going to lose all my chips. But, we are not playing for money. We are playing because it is fun. You can always give me back the chips and we resume playing into the night. There is nothing that says we have to stop playing because I have already lost all my money.