The national debt at the end of the last business day of the fiscal year, which ended on September 30, sat at $21.5 trillion, according to data released on Monday. The national debt at the end of fiscal year 2017 was an estimated $20.25 trillion.
The Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service said in a monthly report released last month that the US budget deficit hit $214 billion in August, which is double the amount compared with the same period a year ago.
The large deficit was a result of federal benefit payments pushed into August instead of September, the report said.
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Earlier, the US Treasury Department observed that in just the first 10 months of the 2018 fiscal year, the US deficit totalled $684 billion, which is a 20.8 percent increase over the same period in 2017.