-
U.S. Budget Gap Tripled to Record $3.1 Trillion in Fiscal 2020
The world’s largest economy just posted its largest fiscal deficit on record. The U.S. budget shortfall more than tripled to $3.1 trillion in the government’s fiscal year ended in September, swelling the national debt to exceed the economy’s size, after lawmakers opened the spending spigots to soften the blow from the coronavirus pandemic, Treasury Department data showed Friday. The deficit as a share of the economy surged to 16%, the largest since 1945, based on second-quarter gross domestic product. At the end of the financial crisis in 2009, the ratio was close to 10% before slowly narrowing through 2015. ... (full story)