Budget Deficit Topped $1 Trillion In 2019

ANKERSLEY New York Times News Service

WASHINGTON - The federal budget deficit surpassed $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department reported on Monday, as tax cuts and spending increases continued to force heavy government borrowing amid a record- long economic expansion.

The deficit grew by 17 percent from 2018 to 2019, the Treasury data shows. That was a slowdown from the 28 percent growth in 2018, the first year President Donald Trump's signature tax cuts were in full effect. Last year's deficit would have been even larger if not for a series of interest-rate cuts undertaken in 2019 by the Federal Reserve, which helped to push the cost of new government debt down.

It was the first calendar year since 2012 that the deficit topped $1 trillion. Deficits swelled after the 2008 financial crisis, as lawmakers cut taxes and increased spending in an effort to revive growth. The gap had narrowed through 2015 under a budget agreement between President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress, which reined in federal spending.

A wave of retirements by baby boomers has begun to put pressure on the deficit by helping to drive up annual spending on Social Security and Medicare. But Trump has increased that pressure by signing both a $1.5 trillion tax-cut package in late 2017, which reduced federal tax revenue, and a series of bipartisan congressional agreements to increase spending on the military and on nondefense domestic programs like education.

The deficit has grown nearly four times as fast, on average, under Trump than it did under Obama. Trump has already added more to the national debt than Obama did in his entire second term - $2.6 trillion, compared with Obama's $2.1 trillion.