2015 Fiscal Year has Ended: US Budget Deficit sits at $439 billion. This means that the deficit has been cut by $1 trillion during the Obama era.

Strong growth in individual tax collection drove the U.S. budget deficit to a fresh Obama-era low in fiscal 2015, the Treasury Department said Thursday.

For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 the shortfall was $439 billion, a decrease of 9%, or $44 billion, from last year. The deficit is the smallest of Barack Obama’s presidency and the lowest since 2007 in both dollar terms and as a percentage of gross domestic product. The deficit fell to 2.5% of GDP.

Overall receipts were up 8% compared to fiscal 2014, to a total of $3.2 trillion. Receipts of individuals’ taxes rose 6% and corporate receipts climbed 10% in the year.

The Treasury said wage and salary growth made individual and payroll tax collection strong throughout the year. Corporate receipts climbed on growth in taxable profits.

Outlays rose 5% in fiscal 2015, with the government spending more on Medicare, Medicaid and education programs.

The new figures arrive as Washington is hurtling toward a pair of fiscal confrontations: raising the debt limit and the expiration of federal funding.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has urged lawmakers to raise the nation’s debt limit as soon as possible, saying extraordinary measures to keep borrowing will run out Nov. 3. Obama says he won’t negotiate over the borrowing limit.

Separately, federal government funding will expire on Dec. 11. Lawmakers and the White House are at odds over raising caps for defense and domestic spending. The Obama administration and top congressional Republicans are in talks about spending levels for fiscal 2016, which began Oct. 1, and fiscal 2017.

Some Republicans oppose a condition-free increase in the debt limit, but outgoing House Speaker John Boehner has pledged not to let the U.S. default on its obligations.

The figures for fiscal 2015 include a surplus of $91 billion for September. The government’s fiscal year runs from October through September.

The federal government’s budget deficit has fallen from a peak of $1.4 trillion the year Obama took office, when lower tax revenues as a result of the recession, among other factors, led to an increase in the deficit.

The Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, has warned that deficits will rise again beginning in fiscal 2017 if current laws don’t change.

PkrBum wrote:Whose budget was obama's 800 billion dollar stimulus added to?

In addition, CBO estimates that spending increases and revenue reductions stemming from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) totaled almost $200 billion this year (excluding the impact on the budget from ARRA's effects on the economy).

PkrBum wrote:http://www.factcheck.org/2012/09/obamas-deficit-dodge/

Obamasucks wrote:The yearly deficit might have been cut, but Obama's continuing resolution budgets every year are in the RED...time and time again to the point that the national debt has DOUBLED and then some under his watch.

Markle wrote:National Debt when semi-retired President Obama took office:  $10 TRILLION

National Debt TODAY, over a year before  President Obama leaves office:  $18,408,603,000,000.00

Nuff said!

boards of FL wrote:The national debt exploded because we regressively cut taxes, engaged in two wars, and then experienced the worst recession since the great depression.  To this day we are still trying to get the budget back to where it was in the Clinton era.  It doesn't matter what party you are affiliated with or what your ideology may be, you're not curing a $1.4 trillion dollar deficit over night.  Being that the case, debt will necessarily rise as you work to reign in that $1.4 trillion dollar deficit, no matter who enters the white house in 2009.