Federal deficit $80 billion in December

The figures released Wednesday also show revenue intake jumped 9 percent in the first quarter of the 2011 fiscal year, when comparing it to the same period in 2010. Spending, meanwhile, increased 3 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was spot-on in its deficit estimate last week, putting the December total at $80 billion. The Associated Press has reported that private economists were putting the December deficit at $84 billion.

In its monthly budget review, the nonpartisan CBO noted two distortions in comparing the deficits for December in 2009 and in 2010: changes in when particular governments payments were made and the large prepayments of deposit insurance premiums in December 2009. If those two items were not included, the December 2010 deficit would have been $35 billion smaller than the December 2009 total, the CBO found.

In a recent post on its director’s blog, the CBO also estimated the spending in entitlement programs is growing at different rates. Medicaid spending jumped 13 percent in the first quarter of the 2011 fiscal year, according to the office, while spending for Social Security and Medicare grew at substantially slower rates: 4 percent and fewer than 1 percent, respectively.   

President Obama is expected to release a new budget in the coming weeks that would include a new deficit forecast. The CBO projected last August that deficits would decrease in the current fiscal year but would still top $1 trillion.

The tax-cut compromise signed into law late last year is also expected by many to increase the deficit in at least the short-term, as its roughly $858 billion price tag was not offset.