US opens fiscal 2027 with a $404 billion October deficit
Receipts fell and spending rose from a year earlier, while payment timing made the headline gap larger.
The United States recorded a $404 billion budget deficit in October, the first month of fiscal 2027, the Treasury Department said Thursday. That compared with a $284 billion gap in October 2025.
Receipts totaled about $369 billion, down from $404 billion a year earlier. Outlays rose to $773 billion from $689 billion. The deficit measures the monthly gap between government spending and revenue, not the total outstanding federal debt.
Payment timing matters when reading the increase. The Treasury statement says some military, veterans, Supplemental Security Income and Medicare payments moved into October because November 1 fell on a non-business day. The headline figures therefore do not provide a clean measure of the underlying change in spending.
The report adds a fiscal update to a day that also brought weekly jobless claims and October existing-home sales. It is a separate government cash-flow release, not a new Federal Reserve policy decision.
