Soaring US budget deficit will mean billions in bond sales

Millions of lost jobs mean billions in lost tax revenue for the US government, and billions in additional Treasury debt to fund a federal budget deficit that may soar to more than four times last year’s record $454.7 billion.

Employers cut 3.7 million positions from their payrolls in the six months since the financial year began October 1, and the unemployment rate reached a 25-year high of 8.5 per cent in March. That suggests receipts for April — the biggest month for tax collection — are likely to come in well below April 2008, analysts said.

With spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programmes rising, the deficit is already at a record $956.8 billion six months into the fiscal year. To help close that gap, the Treasury Department has more than quadrupled borrowing, pushing the government deeper into debt.

“Tax receipts are just collapsing,” said Chris Ahrens, head of interest-rate strategy at UBS Securities in Stamford, Connecticut, one of 16 primary dealers required to bid at Treasury auctions. The need to sell more debt “is a big issue in the Treasury market and it is ongoing. The surging budget deficit is the primary cause.” The government will have to sell $2.4 trillion in new bills, notes and bonds in FY09, according to UBS.

From October through December, the Treasury sold a record $569 billion, up from $82 billion in the same period a year earlier, and auctioned another $493 billion in the last quarter, up from $156 billion. That helps to make up for the drop in tax receipts, pay for the rise in spending and refinance maturing debt.

Along with the principal, the sales add additional interest costs to the deficit for years to come.

Unemployment Benefits
At the same time, government spending has climbed 33 per cent in the fiscal year through March, as relief programmes such as unemployment benefits expand.

Labour Department expenditures have more than doubled to $52.7 billion and payments by the Department of Health and Human Services have risen by $40.6 billion, or 12 per cent. Spending by the Agriculture Department, which runs the food-stamp programme, is 18 per cent higher, or $9.9 billion more than in the same period a year ago. These increases will contribute to a record federal budget deficit this fiscal year.

On March 20, the Congressional Budget Office forecast the shortfall will reach $1.85 trillion, dwarfing the previous peak. UBS estimates a budget deficit of $1.65 trillion, Ahrens said.

Plummeting receipts
Rising unemployment and lower consumer spending helped drag income-tax receipts from individuals and small businesses down 15 per cent in fiscal 2009 through March, compared with a year earlier. Data due in May will likely show that the recession curbed estimated-tax payments in the first quarter, while the drop in financial markets caused capital gains to shrink.

With the tax cuts from President Barack Obama’s stimulus package also taking effect in April, “that combination is going to give you weak tax revenues,” said Douglas Lee, chief economist at Economics From Washington, an independent consulting firm in Potomac, Maryland.