CBO Estimates $1.8 Trillion Deficit for Fiscal Year 2025

Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its estimate of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget deficit in its Monthly Budget Review, projecting that the deficit totaled $1.8 trillion in FY 2025.

The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Amid a pointless and wasteful government shutdown, today we learned that the federal government borrowed $1.8 trillion in the fiscal year that ended last week.

While the deficit didn’t rise from last year, it didn’t fall either, and we continue to borrow far too much. Our national debt is about the size of the entire U.S. economy and will exceed its highest ever record as a share of the economy – set just after World War II – in short order. We are on track to borrow nearly $2 trillion per year for the next decade. How can anyone think this is sustainable? 

We should:  

• Reopen the government without any strings that involve new borrowing attached;  
• Extend the discretionary spending caps that helped control discretionary spending for the past two years;
• Offset any and all new policies using “Super PAYGO,” which requires $2 in offsets for $1 in new spending or tax cuts;  
• Make changes to avert trust fund insolvency for both Medicare and Social Security;
• And set up a fiscal commission to bring our deficits down to 3% of GDP. And we should do all these things quickly.  

The fact that this seems so far out of reach is part of the tragedy of the failure of governance we are witnessing. If lawmakers don’t overcome their differences enough to do their jobs and face the hard work of budgeting, we will lose our status as a superpower.  

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For more information, please contact Matt Klucher, Assistant Director for Media Relations, at klucher@crfb.org.