The US government's expenses over three and a half years under Biden exceeded revenues by $6.6 trillion — the highest in the entire history of these statistics. Thus, in 2021, the indicator amounted to $2.8 trillion, or to 13% of GDP. The following year, the negative balance decreased to $1.4 trillion, or 6.3% of GDP, but last year it increased to $1.7 trillion, or 7.6% of GDP. Over the first six months of this year, it amounted to $758.2 billion, and the share of GDP on a rolling annual basis was 5.5%.
His predecessor, Donald Trump, accumulated a total deficit of $5.6 trillion. At the same time, under Trump, there was a maximum annual negative budget balance of $3.1 trillion, or 15.5% of GDP, in the coronavirus-peak year of 2020.
Barack Obama became the only American leader in this century who managed to reduce the US budget deficit by the end of his presidency, to $2.2 trillion from $5.1 trillion under George W. Bush. However, Bush was the last president under whom the US budget posted a full-year surplus of $130 billion in 2001.
The United States has been in a state of chronic excess of expenditures over income for almost a century; the last time there was a long period of surplus was from 1920 to 1930. The only US leader after World War II with a budget surplus was Harry Truman (1946-1950), and the largest government spending surplus was under Ronald Reagan at $1.34 trillion. The US finances such a gigantic budget deficit from the national debt, which in July for the first time exceeded the $35 trillion mark, and just two weeks later grew by another $160 billion.