The U.S. budget deficit hit a record $3.1 trillion in the recently concluded 2020 budget year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected Thursday.
“Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit—at an estimated 15.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—was the largest since 1945, and 2020 was the fifth consecutive year in which the deficit increased as a percentage of GDP,” the CBO said in its monthly forecast.
The Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget will release actual figures later in the month, if the agencies hold with past practice.
Notably, the CBO figure, based on daily Treasury data, was $180 billion less than it had projected only a few weeks ago, as revenues came in $123 billion above those projections and spending came in slightly below — by $56 billion — forecasts.
