Friday, October 20, 2017

Federal Deficit, Outlays, and Receipts Actuals for FY17

On October 20, 2017, the US Treasury reported in its Monthly Treasury Statement (and xls) for September that the federal deficit for FY 2017 ending September 30, 2017, was $666 billion. Here are the numbers, including total receipts, total outlays, and deficit compared with the numbers projected in the FY 2018 federal budget published in May 2017:

Federal Finances
FY 2017 Outcomes
Budget
billions
Outcome
billions
Receipts $3,460$3,315
Outlays$4,062$3,981
Deficit$603$666

usgovernmentspending.com now shows the new numbers for total FY 2017 total outlays and receipts on its Estimate vs. Actual page.

The Monthly Treasury Statement includes "Table 4: Receipts of the United States Government, September 2017 and Other Periods." This table of receipts by source is used for usgovernmentspending.com to post federal receipt actuals for FY 2017.

This FTS report on FY 17 actuals is a problem for usgovernmentspending.com because this site uses Historical Table 3.2--Outlays by Function and Subfunction from the Budget of the United States as its basic source for federal subfunction outlays. But the Monthly Treasury Statement only includes "Table 9. Summary of Receipts by Source, and Outlays by Function of the U.S. Government, September 2017 and Other Periods". Subfunction amounts don't get reported until the FY19 budget in February 2018. Until then usgovernmentspending.com estimates actual outlays by "subfunction" for FY 2017 by factoring subfunction budgeted amounts for FY17 by the ratio between relevant actual and budgeted "function" amounts where actual outlays by subfunction cannot be gleaned from the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Final detailed FY 2017 actuals will not appear on usgovernmentspending.com until the FY 2019 federal budget is published in February 2018 with the actual outlays for FY 2017 in Historical Table 3.2--Outlays by Function and Subfunction.

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

State and Local Finances for FY 2015

On October 10, 2017 we updated the state and local spending and revenue for FY 2015 using the new Census Bureau State and Local Government Finances summaries for FY 2015 released on September 7, 2017.  This includes state and local spending for the United States as a whole and the 50 individual states and the District of Columbia.

State and local spending and revenue for FY2015 are now actual historical spending as reported by the Census Bureau.  Previously state spending and revenue for FY2015 was actual, and local spending and revenue was estimated.  The following table shows the difference between estimated and actual local spending and revenue for FY2015:

FY 2015Estimated
$ billion
Actual
$ billion
Local Spending$1,701$1,763
Local Revenue$1,268$1,206

The Census Bureau has also updated state and local finances for 2012, 2013 and 2014, as follows:

FY 2012
Previous
$ billion
FY 2012
Latest
$ billion
FY 2013
Previous
$ billion
FY 2013
Latest
$ billion
FY 2014
Previous
$ billion
FY 2014
Latest
$ billion
State Spending$1,497$1,497$1,517$1,517$1,552$1,550
Local Spending$1,650$1,651$1,658$1,662$1,707$1,711
State Revenue$1,366$1,366$1,666$1,668$1,811$1,814
Local Revenue$1,077$1,077$1,155$1,155$1,221$1,229

We have updated the "guesstimated" state and local finances for FY2016-22 as indicated in our "guesstimate" blog entries.