Federal Deficit Tops $2.1 Trillion in FY2021 Through May, Outpacing FY2020’s Record-Setting Deficit

What is going to be done about it? Or is this debt going to continue to lye on the backs of hardworking American's? Why should we have to pay a debt that we did not create?

Our out of control debt is critical to the well being of our country. This debt is not sustainable and a huge liability for our children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, etc. At the rate we're going we could be in for not only a recession, but a depression. No one wants that, but this spending has got to go.

Of course the federal budget deficit is getting higher, we were dealing with a global pandemic, an economic depression, and the previous administration which had no interest in helping the public if it meant that their rich friends would be taxed. The Biden-Harris administration can start to reduce the federal debt by passing the American Jobs and Families Plans that will put more people to work and force the ultra rich to finally pay their fair share.

We could rid ourselves of the deficit if all the freeloading rich would pay their fair share of taxes!!!

I am not worried about the federal deficit. The republicans killed any chance of ever balancing the budget again with their tax give aways to the rich and corporations. I would like to see however, a reduction in the MILITARY budget. It is WAY out of line now, more than all the rest of the countries in the world combined. This is ridiculous and horrific. I don't mind seeing a deficit if it actually helps the citizens of the US, not just the rich and powerful. Time to spend on the little guy.

I’m concerned more with getting our infrastructure repaired and regulations to curb climate change. We need a big effort to stop using fossil fuels. It these aren’t addressed the debt won’t matter

Less taxes, less Government and term limits. How would you like these morons running your family budget. We are on our way to a Venezuela form of government. The only agenda that these democrats have is tax and spend.

A lot of pork needs to be cut out! Some things in bills shouldn’t be there. Money taken from law enforcement and the border security should be put back. Finish the wall. It will save lives plus save money on state budgets. Plus stop a lot of drug traffic.

Sort of off topic, but related. The report below relates to 2 questions of the many questions I have about the ways corporate America contributes to income inequality and how its members take advantage of government coffers, laws and use them to evade a fair tax burden. The first question is why a loan intended to help small businesses and their employees went to a company that exceeded the 500 person workforce limit (instituted to ensure the loans went to small businesses) and which was in the process of completing a new plant in Mexico into which the clearly stated intent was to move their last facility, abandoning its American workforce and the country altogether? The second is why its upper management was paid such high wages, bonuses, and stock options when the company was losing money? Could the American facility be saved if the wages of upper management were lower and the company retained more of its stock? What other practices contributed to lower profits by this company, and which were initially employed to reduce corporate income tax owed? Finally, how widespread is this dynamic in corporate America? This report is by Pro Publica. Late last summer, after churning along through the pandemic with only a two-week pause, managers at FreightCar America called hundreds of workers into the break area at the company’s factory near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to tell them that the plant was closing for good. For some employees, the news wasn’t a shock: They’d been hearing rumors that management would move the work elsewhere for years. The timing, however, seemed odd. Only a few months earlier, the publicly traded company had received a $10 million Paycheck Protection Program Loan — the maximum amount available under a pandemic relief program designed to keep workers employed. Some had believed the funds would keep the doors open for a little while longer. Nevertheless, the plant’s managers announced that all production would move to FreightCar’s new facility in Mexico, which meant most of the assembled workers would lose their jobs. Jim Meyer, FreightCar America’s CEO, told ProPublica in an email that he had not intended to shutter the plant when he received the PPP money, and that it had allowed the company to keep workers on the job through most of 2020 despite a sharp dropoff in new orders The Shoals plant was the last remaining U.S. manufacturing facility for FreightCar, a 120-year-old company headquartered in Chicago that had been shrinking its U.S. footprint for years. In 2008, it shuttered its plant in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. In 2017, it shut down its factory in Danville, Illinois. In 2019, it closed its plant in Roanoke, Virginia and announced it would open a new facility under a joint venture in Castaños, Mexico. When executives informed investors in September that the Shoals facility would also close and manufacturing would shift to Mexico, they projected $25 million in overall savings, including a 60% reduction in labor costs. Leading up to 2020, FreightCar touted the Shoals plant’s competitiveness. A marketing video showed production lines run by industrial robots and skilled workers. “This is the largest, newest, most purpose-built factory in North America,” boasted Meyer. “A modern, state-of-the-art factory in every sense of the word.” But the company was still losing money, to the tune of $75.2 million in 2019. When the pandemic further slowed down orders, executives started talking up the new facility in Mexico instead. “The Mexico labor rate is approximately 20% of that in the U.S.,” Meyer said on an earnings call in August 2020. “And the new plant provides other sources of savings beyond just labor.” Also on the August earnings call, executives explained that loan proceeds had made up for some of the cost of the company’s move to Mexico. Chris Eppel, then the company’s chief financial officer, said that the money also “partially offset” operating losses and inventory purchases. Meyer still got his $500,000 base salary in 2020, plus stock options worth nearly that and a $1 million bonus for securing a $40 million loan from a private investment company. https://www.propublica.org/article/this-company-got-a-10-million-ppp-loan-then-closed-its-plant-and-moved-manufacturing-jobs-to-mexico

no!

No, one thing is clear to me, every republican President increases our debt dramatically and every Democratic President brings it down. Republicans scream the loudest when they are not in power and ignore the debt when they have power. That’s how it’s worked for sixty years. So , no I stopped listening to this rhetoric a long time ago.

I think the federal deficit goals change with national and international circumstances? I would love to be back to the point when Clinton left office and the federal deficit, budget, debt, and inflow into government coffers were in good shape. Since then, we’ve been at unceasing war we started in 2 countries plus continuing the military spending in Somalia and Bosnia, we’ve engaged in costly nation-building while simultaneously conducting war in those 2 countries, we’ve had the Great Recession of 2008, we’ve seen companies relocate corporate offices and facilities to lessen or avoid contributing, the relocation of companies and outsourcing of jobs has meant income tax contributions from jobs that would have arrived in federal coffers did not, we’ve seen a 2017 tax reform act that reduced tax inflow and added 30%-40% to the deficit, income inequality grew while prices continued to rise at the same time as wages for middle and lower strata workers have remained flat for 40 years and, since consumer spending constitutes a major part of the economy’s fuel, there has been broadly less available income for most workers to spend as well as available for taxation, Automation has also removed taxable income from the pool because computers and robots are not paid labor, instead adding to the write-offs companies can use to reduce the taxes they pay into government coffers due to depreciation reductions, and we’ve had a pandemic. I’m sure there are other variables that, not being an economist, I haven’t known to mention. I didn’t, for example, mention the effects of sanctions on certain countries or import/export ratios, or the effect of climate change on the price of food. My point is that there are many reasons for a rise and fall of the federal deficit and imbalance among deficit, debt, budget, and contents of government coffers. We tend to look for simple, linear explanations - a single villain. It’s a complicated, dynamic system, though. At the moment, it makes sense to me given the wars, the recession from which we were still recovering, and the pandemic that government deficit has grown, along with the other financial strains, and that it needed to grow to avert greater economic and societal damage. It also makes sense to me to look at all possible variables related to the strain and make adjustments where possible including equality in taxation and removing incentives for manufacturing, corporate offices, and buying supplies from other countries.

The biggest issues with any deficit spending is the cost of servicing the debt and not the debt per se and it costs less to invest in the future now than dealing with the costs of not doing so in the future. Interest rates are close to historic lows and our currency is still the world standard. … … … It may already be too late to prevent the Greenland land ice cover from melting and raising the ocean levels by 23 feet - and the destruction of coastal cities and increasing severity of weather cycles which will follow. Siberia recently registered an unprecedented surface temperature of 118 degrees F. Time is running out. … … … Yet, this country continues to ignore the obvious and refuses to fund preparing for the future. If we had risked grossly underfunding our world war 2 efforts, we would all be speaking German today. If we continue to grossly underfund our effort and do not get started now to slow and reverse the Climate Crisis we will lose this ‘war’, but will not all be speaking German in a few decades - there won’t be that many of us left to do much ‘speaking’ at all. … … … Biden’s initiatives taken collectively are very synergistic and collectively address the long-festering societal issues that continue to divide us and hold us back, that will make our country more productive (quality childcare for working parents, expanded early and post high school education, job training, new investments on focused research, our infrastructure of both things and people, and more), a coherent strategy and goals to finally begin working to attack the climate crisis and tactics to make doing so a profitable growth industry for our country. These initiatives need to be fully funded. … … … The long term humanitarian and economic costs of not winning the Climate Crisis war are too great to not fully invest in meeting this challenge. This is a new kind of threat, the likes of which are only being currently hinted at in these initial stages. Conservatively protecting the ‘what was’ is far less important than proactively and overwhelmingly investing in preventing the assured ‘what is coming’ if we do not.

I think that the spending is necessary, but I also think taxes should be raised to fund the spending

I'm worried about billionaires and the politicians like you who are in their pockets!

Please please please stop all the excessive spending! Our deficit is out of control and we are relying on our elected officials to keep it balanced.

I'm not worried about the deficit, I'm worried about how we're wasting money and resources and how people are suffering right now. Once the economy is back in shape, the COVID-19 threat is over, and we have passed both traditional and human infrastructure bills, I think we'll be on the road to reducing the deficit. Once again, a Democratic president and congress inherited a financial mess from the Republicans, who love to spend and never care about how they'll pay for it. Trickle-down has never once worked, but the Republicans keep lying about it every chance they get. If the GOP wants to complain about the deficit, maybe they'll work with the Democrats to reduce military spending; I hear they hate the military now just like they turned against police on 1/6. We can start with the defense budget as a way to find more money.

The US governments checkbook should be taken away from them a lot of unnecessary spending going to projects that will not benefit United States of American people the green deal is the cash cow of the Democrats infrastructure have a less than 1% is going to that and the rest is going to feed the fat Hog and democratic states money which will be wasted and none of that money is going to be go to the people of those states Deal with the problem of homelessness billions of dollars going to Nancy Pelosi’s district but not to help the homeless

For those of you who are not concerned about our ever growing national debt, you're being very short sighted. We are already swirling in the toilet bowl down to our country's bitter end and you want us to speed up. Nice. I suppose you're right. Let's just get it over with and start over. Just like tearing off a bandaid. Too bad tens and possibly hundreds of millions of people will die in that process. Not your problem I suppose.

Dollars will soon become worthless if we don’t get a hold of this soon.