Rachelle Younglai
Reuters
The United States government reported a budget surplus for the final month of the 2012 fiscal year, but the tiny bump in revenues did not prevent the country’s deficit from exceeding $1 trillion for the fourth year in a row.
The 2012 budget gap was $1.089 trillion, narrower than last year’s deficit of $1.297 trillion because of higher corporate income tax receipts and less spending, the Treasury Department said on Friday.
The deficit equaled 7.0 percent of U.S. economic output, down from 8.7 percent last year, the department said. Economists generally consider deficits exceeding 3.0 percent of gross domestic product to be unsustainable in the long term.