On October 16, 2020, the US Treasury reported in its Monthly Treasury Statement (and xlsx) for September that the federal deficit for FY 2020 ending September 30, 2020, was $3,132 billion. Here are the numbers, including total receipts, total outlays, and deficit compared with the numbers projected in the FY 2021 federal budget published in February 2020, and the "guesstimates" made by usgovernmentspending.com in late September 2020:
| Federal Finances FY 2020 Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget billions | Guesst. billions | Outcome billions | |
| Receipts | $3,706 | $3,463 | $3,420 |
| Outlays | $4,790 | $6,371 | $6,552 |
| Deficit | $1,083 | $2,908 | $3,132 |
usgovernmentspending.com now shows the new numbers for total FY 2020 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 2020.
This FTS report on FY 20 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 2020 and Other Periods". Subfunction amounts don't get reported until the FY22 budget in February 2021. Until then usgovernmentspending.com estimates actual outlays by "subfunction" for FY 2020 by factoring subfunction budgeted amounts for FY20 by the ratio between relevant actual and budgeted "function" amounts where actual outlays by subfunction cannot be gleaned from the Monthly Treasury Statement.
On top of that, the unbudgeted spending to fight the COVID-19 virus is tucked into various places where you'd least expect it. We have tried to unearth these monies in the FTS and translate them into subfunction amounts.
Final detailed FY 2020 actuals will not appear on usgovernmentspending.com until the FY 2022 federal budget is published in February 2021 with the actual outlays for FY 2020 in Historical Table 3.2--Outlays by Function and Subfunction.
Final detailed FY 2020 actuals will not appear on usgovernmentspending.com until the FY 2022 federal budget is published in February 2021 with the actual outlays for FY 2020 in Historical Table 3.2--Outlays by Function and Subfunction.
