Biden’s 2024 Budget: Make a Little More, Spend Even More Than That

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) put out its monthly budget review a few days ago, and led with this graphic (it’s interactive at their site, although all the interactivity does is give you the values for the four bars. They could have just put the values on the bars and saved some bandwidth, but as you can tell from the outlays, the government isn’t terribly concerned with costs.):

After recoiling in horror at the relative magnitudes of the outlays vs. revenues, you might find it difficult to tell whether 2024 is worse off than 2023. The CBO’s text is a little more informative:

The federal budget deficit was $1.2 trillion in the first eight months of fiscal year 2024, the Congressional Budget Office estimates—$38 billion more than the deficit recorded during the same period last fiscal year. Revenues were $294 billion (or 10 percent) higher and outlays were $332 billion (or 8 percent) higher from October through May than during the same period in fiscal year 2023.

They go on to claim that weekend shifts of government payments were the cause of the increased outlays, but don’t explain how that might have affected revenues as well. But here’s the money quote:

Several factors will cause the deficit for 2024 to be larger than last year’s—and larger than CBO estimated in February. In particular, spending this year is now anticipated to be greater than previously projected. Contributing to that outcome are additional costs—that have not yet been recorded—stemming from administrative actions associated with student loans and from legislation providing international assistance.

The CBO will give us a deficit estimate for all of 2024 next week. Look forward to it.