© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Deficit Projections: See Them Grow; This Year's Now A Record $1.5 Trillion

The headline is " CBO Sees Record Budget Gap At Nearly $1.5 Trillion."

As the Associated Press writes, "new budget estimates released Wednesday predict the government's deficit will hit almost $1.5 trillion this year, a new record. The daunting numbers mean that the government will have to borrow 40 cents for every dollar it spends."

The wire service adds that "the latest figures are up from previous estimates because of bipartisan legislation passed in December that extended Bush-era tax cuts, unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and provided a 2 percent payroll tax cut this year. That measure added almost $400 billion to this year's deficit, CBO says."

One way to get a handle on how the numbers keep getting larger is to read back through the blog and other materials put online by the , the source of this latest projection.

Here is how CBO's deficit projection for this fiscal year (which ends Sept. 30) has changed:

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.