This should come as a shock to exactly nobody.

Last week, the Treasury reported that in May, the US government collected $323.6 billion in tax receipts, it spent more than double that, or some $670 billion...

.. resulting in a May budget deficit of $347 billion - about $100 billion more than consensus expected - and the second biggest May deficit on record, with only the Covid crisis peak of May 2020 higher.

As a result of the blowout May deficit, the cumulative fiscal 2024 shortfall once again surpassed the 2023 total, bringing the YTD deficit total to just over $1.2 trillion more than the $1.16 trillion cumulative deficit through May 2023, and that's with 4 more months left in the fiscal year

Now, at this point, someone who still has a functioning brain at the CBO looked at the two llines and realized that with the final 2023 deficit printing just over $2 trillion, the CBO's current forecast of "only" $1.5 trillion for 2024 looked idiotic at best, and like total propaganda garbage at worst.

And so, moments ago - and, again, with just 4 months left in fiscal 2024 - the CBO took machete to its 2024 forecast, and in hopes to avoid looking like a consummate fool, hiked its 2024 budget deficit forecast from $1.5 trillion to $1.9 trillion, confirming that there will be effectively no difference in the fiscal picture between 2023 and 2024.

In its latest projections published today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted that government spending would continue to, drumroll, rise. The CBO estimate of the budget deficit was $400 billion higher from the office’s last projections released in February, bringing the total to $1.9 trillion, up from its previous $1.5 trillion forecast.