U.S. budget deficit shattered one-month record in June as spending outpaced revenue by $864 billion

Washington Post logoA huge spending increase and sharp falloff in revenue led to the large gap. The deficit in the past nine months has breached $2.7 trillion.

The U.S. budget deficit widened to a record-high $864 billion last month because of the federal government’s extraordinary response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Treasury Department said on Monday.

In June 2019, the budget deficit was just $8 billion.

Federal spending rose to more than $1.1 trillion in June, more than twice what the U.S. government spends in a typical month. The amount of tax revenue collected by the federal government remained largely flat, at about $240 billion, in part because the Treasury Department delayed the tax filing deadline until July. Continue reading.