The Deficit Through Eleven Months Is $1,967 Billion, Six Billion Less Than Last Year. Strip Out the Calendar and It Is $82 Billion More.

The Congressional Budget Office published its Monthly Budget Review for August on September 9. Its headline is that the deficit for the first eleven months of fiscal 2026 came in $6 billion below the same stretch of fiscal 2025. Its second paragraph takes most of that back.

The calendar, not the policy

Two timing shifts sit inside the comparison, and they run in opposite directions across the two years.

Payments that otherwise would have been due on September 1, 2025, which fell on the Labor Day holiday, were shifted into August of that year.

Payments owed on August 1, 2026, which fell on a weekend, were likewise shifted into the previous month. Neither shift changes what the government spends over a year; both move the month it lands in. CBO's adjusted comparison is the one to read.

If not for those shifts, the deficit thus far for fiscal year 2026 would have been $82 billion more than the shortfall for the same period in fiscal year 2025.

Eleven months, side by side

• Receipts: $4,691 billion in fiscal 2025, $4,845 billion in fiscal 2026. Up $154 billion, or 3%.
• Outlays: $6,664 billion in fiscal 2025, $6,812 billion in fiscal 2026. Up $147 billion, or 2%.
• Deficit: $1,973 billion in fiscal 2025, $1,967 billion in fiscal 2026.

Where the receipts moved

The revenue side is not one story. Two large categories moved hard in opposite directions.

• Individual income and payroll taxes: up $239 billion, or 6 percent.
• Corporate income taxes: down $96 billion, or 25 percent.
• Customs duties: up $1 billion, or 1 percent - a figure held down by roughly $110 billion of tariff refunds issued over the period.

The customs line is the one worth pausing on. A 1 percent increase in duties is not a small tariff take; it is a large one against which a large volume of refunds has been paid out.

Where the outlays moved

• Net interest on the public debt: up $111 billion, or 12 percent.
• Social Security: up $78 billion, or 5 percent.
• Medicare: up $73 billion, or 8 percent.
• Veterans Affairs: up $49 billion, or 14 percent.
• Medicaid: up $47 billion, or 8 percent.
• Defense - military: up $41 billion, or 5 percent.

Net interest rose by more than any programme on that list. It is the cost of carrying debt already issued, and it is not appropriated each year.

August alone

The single month looks dramatic and mostly is not. CBO estimates August receipts of $359 billion against $344 billion a year earlier, up $15 billion or 4 percent, and outlays of $527 billion against $689 billion, down $162 billion or 23 percent. That leaves an August deficit of about $168 billion against $345 billion. The $162 billion fall in outlays is largely the mirror image of last year's Labor Day shift. Treasury's own Monthly Treasury Statement, published September 11, recorded the August deficit at $166.8 billion, with receipts of $360.0 billion and outlays of $526.8 billion.

This article summarises two published fiscal releases and is not investment advice.