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US budget gap creeps above $300b mark

REUTERS, Washington
With the end of the fiscal year nearing, the US government's budget gap crept into record territory in July, surpassing $300 billion, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.
The year-to-date deficit, still with August and September to go in the budget year, rose to $323.98 billion, Treasury said in its monthly budget statement. July's deficit, at $54.24 billion, was close to expectations and wider than in July 2002, when it was $29.16 billion.
The 1992 budget year holds the record for the largest annual shortfall, at $290 billion. The 2003 is gap is expected to easily surpass that by coming in above $400 billion.
Earlier this month, the
Congressional Budget office, the
nonpartisan fiscal watchdog for
Capitol Hill, said it expected the
2003 deficit to total about $401 billion, some $54 billion less than what the White House's Office of Management and Budget had projected only weeks before.
The CBO said its estimate differed from the OMR's largely because it had penciled in about $18 billion less in military spending by the government in coming months.
In July, US receipts totaled $123.59 billion, down from $134.41 billion in July 2002, while spending rose to $177.83 billion, up from $163.57 billion.
For the budget year so far, individual income taxes, the largest
portion of federal revenues, have fallen 6.9 per cent.
At the same time, spending on defense has increased 15.9 per cent and expenditures on Social Security have increased 4.1 per cent.
The return to budget deficits in 2002 after four years of surpluses has led congressional Democrats to assail Republican economic and fiscal policies. The White House has countered that the gaps have been caused by military spending and a slow economy that's eaten into receipts.
At about 4 per cent of the size of the economy, the 2003 deficit would still be below 1983's shortfall, which at 6.0 per cent of the economy was the largest in recent decades.