Tax Take Keeps Growing—But Good Luck Catching Up With Government Spending
16th April 2015
The federal government took in $1,477,901,000,000 in federal tax deposits between October 1, 2014 and April 14 of this year—the fiscal year to date. That number comes courtesy of the U.S. government’s Daily Treasury Statement. The good folks at CNSNews.com did the math so that I don’t have to and found that this is “an all-time record for the amount of inflation-adjusted tax revenue brought into the federal Treasury from the beginning of the fiscal year through the April 15 tax-filing deadline.”
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That same Daily Treasury Statement revealed a total public debt outstanding of $18,152,014,000,000. That’s $18 trillion give or take. Unlike tax deposits, it’s not a record number. It’s close enough though, since federal debt hit $18 trillion for the first time last November. Don’t expect it to drop much. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) anticipates expenditures to outstrip revenue, requiring more borrowing, into the foreseeable future. “[B]udget deficits are projected to rise steadily and, by 2039, to push federal debt held by the public up to a percentage of GDP seen only once before in U.S. history (just after World War II),” warned the CBO last summer.
No growth of wealth can match the spending prowess of a bureaucrat with his snout in the trough.