The budget deficit more than tripled to $3.14 trillion in fiscal 2020 owing to numerous Covid bills. It fell slightly to $2.7 trillion in 2021 because individual and corporate income tax revenue surged—not because of spending discipline. As pandemic welfare payments expired, the deficit last year clocked in at $1.4 trillion.
During his State of the Union, Mr. Biden blamed deficits on his predecessor. But the deficits during the first three years of the Trump Presidency totalled $2.5 trillion—less than in the first year of Mr. Biden’s. The deficit is on a path to increase again this year owing to the infrastructure bill, Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and end-of-year omnibus blowout.
and Mike Crapo:
Moreover, corporate taxes are only one slice of the federal revenue pie, which hit new records after 2017. In the years since, federal tax revenue averaged about 17.3% of gross domestic product, according to the Tax Foundation. This was “higher than most years” before the tax cut and higher than the post-war average of 17.2%. For the most recent fiscal year, which ended in September 2022, federal tax collections were at a multidecade high of approximately 19.6% of GDP. In all of U.S. history, federal tax collections have only been that high three times. Once, during the dot-com bubble, it hit 20%. The other two times were midway through World War II: Revenue hit 20.5% of GDP in 1943 and 19.9% in 1944.