12-Month Rolling Deficit is $2.1 Trillion in January 2025

The 12-month rolling deficit – or the amount the federal government has borrowed over the past year – totaled $2.1 trillion, based on estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. This includes an estimated $127 billion deficit in January 2025, which is $105 billion higher than the monthly deficit logged in January 2024.

Much of this uptick occurred due to timing shifts, with payments for February 2025 logged in January due to February 1 falling on a weekend. Had those payments not been shifted, CBO estimates that the January 2025 deficit would have been $20 billion larger than the January 2024 deficit. Using interpolated estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), we estimate that the rolling deficit totaled 7.3 percent of GDP versus 6.4 percent of GDP from a year prior.