A new Congressional Budget Office report says the federal budget deficit for the first half of fiscal 2017 reached $522 billion, approximately $63 billion higher than the agency’s shortfall estimates for the same period in FY 2016.CBO said in the report published Friday the total amount of receipts associated with corporate and individual income taxes as well as Federal Reserve remittances dropped by $2 billion to approximately $1.5 trillion from October 2016 to March 2017.
Total outlays climbed by 3 percent in the past six months to about $1.99 trillion driven by spending increases in Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare programs, according to the report.
The federal government incurred $173 billion in deficit in March, about $65 billion higher than CBO’s March 2016 deficit estimates.
The Treasury Department recorded $192 billion in actual deficit in February, the report added.
