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Number crunchers at the treasury department released a tally of the government's finances this afternoon, and it's not pretty. For the fiscal year that just ended, the government ran a deficit of almost $2 trillion. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: This is the biggest annual deficit since 2021, when the country was still digging out of the pandemic. It's a startling amount of red ink for a country that's not in recession or a widespread war. Government revenues increased by 3% last year but government spending grew twice as fast. Carolyn Bourdeaux, who heads the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group, notes just paying interest on past debts is now the government's second biggest expense behind only Social Security.
CAROLYN BOURDEAUX: That is just not the budget of a great nation. That is not the budget of a nation that is investing in its future, is able to provide a strong defense. That is a real challenge.
HORSLEY: The government is having to borrow so much money, Bourdeaux says, It's driving up interest rates for everyone else.
BOURDEAUX: That is affecting affordability. It's making it harder to afford a home, harder to afford a car, harder to start or grow a small business.
HORSLEY: The deficit for the just-ended fiscal year amounted to 6% of the overall economy, a bigger slice than the year before. Bourdeaux sees little sign policymakers are ready to tackle the problem. If anything, she says, they're making it worse.
BOURDEAUX: I see a lot of candidates out on the campaign trail making a lot of promises. Making a lot of promises about tax cuts. Making a lot of promises about new spending.
HORSLEY: The government shaved a little bit of spending off food stamps and FEMA last year, but those savings were dwarfed by increased spending on the military. Marc Goldwein is with the Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget, which tries to stem the tide of red ink. He says the only way to get control over the deficit is to cut spending, raise taxes or most likely some combination of the two.
MARC GOLDWEIN: We're here to do sort of an all-of-the-above approach, and most of this stuff is going to be unpopular sometimes. But I think in the bigger picture, it's going to help with our major affordability challenges, and it's going to help with sort of our loss of faith in government challenges because people will see government actually can solve big problems.
HORSLEY: President Trump likes to boast that tariff revenue will help close the federal deficit. His import taxes did raise some money for the government this past fiscal year, but the treasury had to refund nearly half that revenue after the Supreme Court ruled that many of the president's tariffs are illegal. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
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