Treasury Confirms $404 Billion Deficit for First Month of Fiscal Year 2027

The United States borrowed $404 billion in the first month of Fiscal Year (FY) 2027, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement from the Treasury Department.

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

We are only one month into the Fiscal Year and have already borrowed $404 billion, according to the Treasury Department. That means we borrowed nearly half a trillion dollars in a single month, and averaged more than $13 billion per day in October. While some of this is due to some payments for November being paid in October, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that when you adjust for those timing shifts, deficits increased by more than $100 billion in October 2026 over the same month in 2025.

We’re now in the era of $2 trillion deficits – perhaps even higher, given that October’s deficit was already one-fifth of that projected total. Worse so, the deficit is more than 6% of the economy, which is about double the level that most economists think is sustainable. We ought to take this reality as a call to action: it’s time to get our borrowing under control.

With inflation remaining elevated, interest rates at near-two-decade highs, and debt on track to exceed its record as a share of the economy in just a few years, we need solutions to our fiscal situation.  

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