The US Daily Deficit for 2/8/2013 was $8.8B, bringing the 8 day total to $85B. This, coincidentally, is about the same amount of annual spending that is supposed to be cut in the dreaded “Sequester”. That’s right…through 8 days of February, we have already run a deficit larger than the amount sequestration is supposed to save over an entire year. If nothing else, it gives you some scale to how puny these cuts really are compared to what is actually needed. If this tiny little $85B cut is going to hollow out our military, increase unemployment and otherwise wreck havok on our economy, just imagine what’s going to happen when the market takes away our ability to deficit spend. Just something to think about.
Despite the above reality check, we can see that through 8 days, February 2013 is still $31B below February 2012’s deficit through 8 days. unfortunately, about $20B of that is related to delayed 2013 refunds, and about $10B is due to the timing of social security payments, so adjusting for timing, we are on track with last year. Refunds are starting to accelerate…we’ll know in a few weeks if they will catch up to 2012 or get pushed into March.
