The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted on Tuesday that the federal government would run a budget deficit of around 1.1 trillion U.S. dollars in the 2012 fiscal year.
Measured as a share of the nation's gross domestic product
(GDP) , the budget shortfall of 7 percent in the 2012 fiscal year ending Sept.
2012 was nearly 2 percentage points below the deficit recorded in the 2011
fiscal year, but still higher than any deficit between 1947 and 2008, the CBO
said in a report.
This would mark the fourth fiscal year in a row that the U.S. federal government budget exceeds the 1-trillion-dollar threshold. And the latest budget deficit projection for this fiscal year was higher than the previous estimate of 973 billion U.S. dollars.
The report was a fresh reminder of the unsustainable fiscal trajectory of the U.S. federal government.
CBO, the non-partisan budgetary and economic research agency for the Congress, predicted that the U.S. federal government's budget deficit will drop to 585 billion U.S. dollars in the 2013 fiscal year, largely due to rising revenue and the expiration of George W. Bush-era income tax cut policies.
However, many GOP lawmakers have fought hard for the continuation of the Bush-era tax cut policies, as they believe that raising taxes for job creators now would harm the still fragile economic recovery.
"The federal budget deficit -although starting to shrink- remains very large by historical standards," cautioned the CBO, adding that how much and how quickly the deficit declines will depend in part on how well the economy does over the next few years.
The pace of the economic recovery has been slow since the recession ended in June 2009, and the CBO expects that, under current laws governing taxes and spending, the economy will continue to grow at a sluggish pace over the next two years, according to the report.
(VietNamNet/Xinhuanet)
