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US federal budget deficit soars to record $3.1 trillion

Saturday, 17 October 2020 12:14 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 17 October 2020 12:17 AM ]

The US Treasury Building in Washington, DC. (Getty Images)

The US government has announced a record $3.1 trillion budget deficit as the coronavirus continues to batter the world’s largest economy.

Official figures suggested on Friday that the budget deficit surged by a whopping 218 percent in the fiscal year that concluded at the end of September.

It is more than double the size of the previous deficit, recorded during the 2009 global financial crisis, and more than triple last year’s shortfall of $984 billion.

According to the Treasury Department, the government's debt has soared to nearly $27 trillion, dwarfing the country’s economy which is worth less than $20 trillion.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that increased spending aimed at easing the impact of COVID-19 is behind the jump in figures.

"The Administration remains fully committed to supporting American workers, families, and businesses and to ensuring that our robust economic rebound continues," Mnuchin added.

“Unprecedented times call for unprecedented deficits,” said William Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a centrist Washington think tank. “Today’s deficit figure is the result of six months of fighting the pandemic and its economic fallout.”

Trump has been under fire for publicly downplaying the threat of the pandemic when it broke out in the US in late February, and his handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

US budget deficit widens; spending up on health, military

The US government’s deficit increased in July mainly because of spending on health care and the military.

US media said the president had received multiple heads-ups about the looming catastrophe as the coronavirus started to spread, but failed to mobilize for a major pandemic.

The US president also spared no effort during the past months to pin the blame on the Chinese officials for the virus outbreak, claiming that the pandemic had started from a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The allegation was categorically dismissed by Beijing.

The United States, the worst-hit country by the pandemic, has so far registered a record number of 8 million confirmed cases and nearly 218,000 deaths.

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