This is from the Treasury Department today. The 2022 federal deficit was half what it was in 2021.
11 thoughts on “Raw data: The federal deficit in 2022”
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Cats, charts, and politics
Cats, charts, and politics
This is from the Treasury Department today. The 2022 federal deficit was half what it was in 2021.
Comments are closed.
Striking how every single damn time there's a Republican administration, the deficit spikes and then a Dem has to come in and clean up the mess while still getting blamed for their predecessor's disaster. Wash, rinse, repeat. How the public still buys the line that Republicans are the party of "fiscal responsibility" is beyond me...
100% agree. The weirdest thing in politics. I think it's down to most journalists being Republicans basically. They don't want to write the obvious story "The Republicans are not the party of a good economy"
I think most journalists think of themselves as moderates. Just my perception.
But I also think that modern journalism is intellectually lazy and terrified of being criticized by bad actors. Working the refs works. Such a system is inherently slanted towards the bad actors.
"Inherently lazy", yes. Witness also the "horserace coverage" of elections. We don't learn much, or anything, about the candidates' positions and rationales for them, and whether these are consistent with the candidates' actual records, we just get who's up, who's down and the latest poll or fundraising numbers. Worthless.
It's probably not so much that journalists are Republicans as that their bosses are.
The big spikes were from correct fiscal responses to economic emergencies in 2008 and 2020. You might be able to pin the blame for 2008's crisis on the GWB administration, but the deficit was part of the recovery.
The larger and larger deficits from 2017 through 2019 are a different story. Trump and the Trump Party built that.
More bad news for Biden!!
Worse yet, diminishing deficits, an improving economy, inflation going down, and lower gasoline prices are ... just what you expect under a Democratic administration. Heck, there's even a WaPo "Fact Checker" which takes Biden to task for saying Social Security payments are going up and Medicare premiums going down ... while admitting that they actually are. FOUR PINOCCHIOS! For saying what's literally true.
Hence, none of this stuff is "news"! "Dog bites man!" Nothing to report here.
It might be better to not include 2019 and 2020 in that analysis, because of covid and the related stimulus packages. Those years are outliers, and any conclusions drawn about them are likely to be in error.
It might be better to not include 2019 and 2020 in that analysis, because of covid and the related stimulus packages. Those years are outliers, and any conclusions drawn about them are likely to be in error.
Fiscal year 2019 started October 1, 2018. What on earth was outlierish about that fiscal year? And there's absolutely no reason not to include fiscal years (20 & 21) affected by the pandemic: there's no problem drawing conclusions. We know perfectly well that the federal deficit increased dramatically because of covid-related spending. And fortunately, the fiscal year that just ended saw a dramatic decrease in the deficit because of strong tax collections and a decrease in covid-related spending.
If what you're saying is that another 50% reduction in federal borrowing isn't in the cards, that's true. But nobody's suggesting it is. For similar reasons we don't pretend that the dramatic reduction in the deficit that occurred in 1946 was a mirage: it was very real. It just wasn't repeated, because you can only exit World War II once.
Of course, the real deficits were much higher in the early 2000's due to the W's Iraq War. Conveniently, that spending was somehow declared "off budget" as if it didn't exist. It would be helpful to see the budget history re-plotted with a stacked bar showing the additional expenditures for a war initiated under false pretenses.
Kevin,
I might have missed it, but can you write a bit about why there is so much hate on the student debt relief act? It's amazing how long this keeps on going.
Thanks.