General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJudyM
(29,402 posts)IcyPeas
(22,065 posts)Make7
(8,543 posts)Misleading (but technically true) statistics in this case. According to the Treasury Department, federal spending has exceeded revenue by about $1.98 trillion since the end of January. Right now we are in the "extraordinary measures" accounting method to avoid exceeding the debt limit - once the limit is raised the recorded debt will likely jump by multiple hundreds of billions of dollars.
The American Rescue Plan Act (March 2021) was a $1.9 trillion dollar spending bill with lots of immediate outlays included. The White House budget estimates the deficit for fiscal year 2021 at $3.67 trillion and for fiscal year 2022 as $1.84 trillion. Actual debt increasing $0.67 trillion since January 20th doesn't really fit with reported government spending and revenue.
Shortly after Trump took office he tweeted:
Which was nonsense. The federal government sometimes shuffles money around to avoid increasing the amount of recorded debt - that doesn't mean additional debt isn't going to be accounted for when normal accounting procedures are reinstated (or when the debt ceiling is raised).