Friday, October 25, 2019

Federal Deficit, Receipts, Outlays Actuals for FY19

On October 25, 2019, the US Treasury reported in its Monthly Treasury Statement (and xlsx) for September that the federal deficit for FY 2019 ending September 30, 2019, was $984 billion. Here are the numbers, including total receipts, total outlays, and deficit compared with the numbers projected in the FY 2020 federal budget published in February 2019:

Federal Finances
FY 2019 Outcomes
Budget
billions
Outcome
billions
Receipts $3,438$3,462
Outlays$4,529$4,447
Deficit$1,091$984

usgovernmentspending.com now shows the new numbers for total FY 2019 total outlays and receipts on its Estimate vs. Actual page.

The Monthly Treasury Statement includes "Table 4: Receipts of the United States Government, September 2019 and Other Periods." This table of receipts by source is used for usgovernmentspending.com to post details of federal receipt actuals for FY 2019.

This FTS report on FY 19 actuals is a problem for usgovernmentspending.com because this site uses Historical Table 3.2--Outlays by Function and Subfunction from the Budget of the United States as its basic source for federal subfunction outlays. But the Monthly Treasury Statement only includes "Table 9. Summary of Receipts by Source, and Outlays by Function of the U.S. Government, September 2019 and Other Periods". Subfunction amounts don't get reported until the FY21 budget in February 2020. Until then usgovernmentspending.com estimates actual outlays by "subfunction" for FY 2019 by factoring subfunction budgeted amounts for FY19 by the ratio between relevant actual and budgeted "function" amounts where actual outlays by subfunction cannot be gleaned from the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Final detailed FY 2019 actuals will not appear on usgovernmentspending.com until the FY 2021 federal budget is published in February 2020 with the actual outlays for FY 2019 in Historical Table 3.2--Outlays by Function and Subfunction.