U.S. October budget deficit jumps to $257 billion, handing hole to Trump

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. budget deficit jumped nearly four-fold to $257 billion in October, a figure inflated by several one-off factors, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday but starting a new fiscal year with a big hole that will be turned over to President-elect Donald Trump in January.

The Treasury said the October deficit was up 287% from the $67 billion deficit in October 2023, but calendar adjustments in benefit payments had cut that month’s deficit nearly in half.

A U.S. Treasury official also said that in October 2023, the Treasury received about $75 billion in tax payments that had been deferred by wildfires in California and other natural disasters that year.

Without these adjustments, the official said the October 2024 deficit would have been about $47 billion, or 22% higher than the prior October.

October federal receipts were down 19% or $77 billion to $327 billion compared with October 2023, while October outlays were up 24%, or $114 billion to $584 billion.

The budget results for October, the first month of the 2025 fiscal year, come after President Joe Biden’s administration turned in a full-year fiscal 2024 deficit of $1.83 trillion, the largest outside the COVID-19 era.

Outlays for Social Security, Medicare and military spending rose, but one bright spot was a $7 billion or 8% decline in the Treasury’s public debt service costs to $82 billion, the first year-on-year decline since August 2023.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci)