An op-ed piece in the New York Times by Paul Krugman mentioned U.S. budget deficits and their trends. I’ve looked at the U.S. total federal debt ( History Of The Federal Debt and Percentage Change in Federal Debt, 1958-2012 ) and this post by Mr. Krugman got me thinking about budget deficits.
Historical records for the U.S. federal budget, surpluses and deficits are available from the Office of Management and Budget site. I downloaded Table 1.1—Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits (-): 1789–2018, a 39 KB Excel file.
Here are a few highlights of U.S. federal budget deficits and surpluses since 1900:
- From 1900 to 2012 there have been budget surpluses 31 times
- From 1950 to 2012 there have been budget surpluses only 9 times
- The largest single year surplus was in 1927, with a surplus of $1.155 billion ( billion, with a B! )
- The largest deficit in a single year was 2009, with a monster deficit of $1.4 trillion ( with a T! )
- There was a four year streak of budget surpluses from 1998 to 2001, the previous four year streak before that was all the back in the 1920s
- Every year in the 1920s there was a budget surplus
- The longest budget surplus streak was 1920 to 1930
- The longest period without a surplus was 1970 to 1997
- The first time the deficit exceeded one billion dollars was 1918, at $9 billion
- The first time the deficit exceeded one hundred billion dollars was 1982, at $127.9 billion
It has been 11 years since we last had a budget surplus. I hope that we don’t break the 1970 to 1997 streak for the longest period without a budget surplus.