Treasury reports 3rd-largest budget deficit on record

The United States Department of the Treasury has recently released data showing that the budget deficit reached its 3rd-highest point ever in American history, contradicting President Trumps statements regarding budget savings.

The Treasury Department building in Washington D.C.

According to the new data, the budget deficit in the month of May surpassed a whopping $316 billion, ranking as the 3rd single greatest monthly deficit ever in American history.

When adjusting this month-specific data to the year, the 12-month federal deficit has surpassed $2 trillion, up 6.1% from the previous year and consisting of roughly 6.7% of the nation's GDP nominal.

Meanwhile, the value of the government's total expenditures (outlays) rose 3% against the year to $687 billion, according to ZeroHedge.

Most of the nation's revenues in May were obtained by excise taxes and corporate taxes, while their expenditures came from a mixture of interest payments, healthcare, social security, and income security.

Total federal expenditures, Treasury Department.

With this month marking the 3rd highest deficit in history, the government needed to take out more loans than ever before, further pressuring rate cuts to happen to minimize interest payments. President Trump urging the Fed to cut rates by a full point may have been contributed by this massive debt pile which the government now needs to pay off both upfront and through passive compounded interest which is gradually becoming the greatest expense for the treasury, now only behind misc. payments, Medicare, and Social Security, according to the Treasury.

Trump has repeatedly promised that tariff revenues would make up for these losses and add some, but this has not been the case at all. In the past year, tariff revenues did surge 270% to a record $23 billion. However, this is merely a small number compared to the $316 billion deficit that has been amassed.

And even worse, the imminent passage of the "Big, Beautiful Bill" has been projected to increase the budget deficit by several billions over the next year.

"I'm worried that we are talking too much about the deficit effect … with [Congress] looking to reshape fiscal policy broadly over the next decade … a larger fiscal policy discussion is more appropriate," said Brookings' Wendy Edelberg when this news came out.

As Edelberg emphasized, this is merely a short-term symptom of a long-term issue that requires significant overhaul for an effective solution. And a heavily costly tax bill would only exacerbate the trajectory.