File photo: The U.S. Treasury building in Washington, July 8, 2012. Sebastian Wallroth, Wikimedia / CC BY 3.0; cropped and resized.
The federal government opened fiscal 2027 with a $404.1 billion budget deficit in October, as spending rose and revenue fell from a year earlier, according to the Treasury Department's monthly statement released Thursday.
Outlays totaled $773.0 billion, up from $688.7 billion in October 2025. Receipts fell to $368.9 billion from $404.4 billion, the statement showed. The resulting shortfall was 42.1% larger than the $284.3 billion deficit a year earlier.
The figures cover one month, not the full fiscal year. The federal government's 2027 fiscal year began October 1, 2026.
Payment timing affected October's spending. Treasury said payments for military active duty and retirement, veterans' benefits, Supplemental Security Income and certain Medicare programs moved into October because November 1 fell on a non-business day. That means the headline deficit should not be read as a timing-adjusted measure of the underlying monthly budget trend.
Treasury reported $307.7 billion in borrowing from the public during October. Other financing came from a reduction in operating cash and other means, according to the statement.
For the full fiscal year that ended in September, the statement lists receipts of $5.403 trillion, outlays of $7.396 trillion and a deficit of $1.993 trillion. Those completed fiscal-2026 totals are separate from October's first-month fiscal-2027 result.
Treasury's monthly statement reports the government's receipts, outlays and means of financing on a modified cash basis. A monthly budget deficit is the gap between receipts and outlays over that period, not the total outstanding national debt.
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