WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department says the federal deficit swelled to $263.3 billion in the first five months of this budget year as record spending during the period outpaced record revenues.
The department's latest snapshot of the government's balance sheets, released Wednesday, shows that the deficit for the budget year that began Oct. 1 was up a whopping 62 percent from the red ink of $162.2 billion for the corresponding five-month period last year.
The latest year-to-date budget deficit of $263.3 billion was an all-time high, the government said.
Spending totaled a record $1.23 trillion, while revenues totaled $967.2 billion, also an all-time high.
For the month of February alone, the government ran a deficit of $175.6 billion, a record for any single month. That was larger than the shortfall of around $170 billion that economists were expecting.