The U.S. federal budget deficit fell by half for the 2022 financial year as once-aggressive pandemic relief spending dried up, the Treasury Department said on Friday.
The gap between what the government spent and what it collected tumbled to $1.375 trillion at the end of September, down from the 2021 deficit of $2.776 trillion.
The decline would have been steeper if it were not for the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan: Education Department spending for the year totaled $639.4 billion, $408 billion higher than the estimate.
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