More Income, Lower Expenses

As I try to balance my personal budget, I always try to reduce my expenses, while increasing my income. It's a tough thing to do, but I look for trends to determine if I am going in the right direction.

Similarly, it looks like the federal government is doing the same thing:

"The federal government posted the first budget surplus for December in three years as corporate tax payments hit an all-time high, helping offset a record level for spending, the Treasury Department reported Thursday.

The department said in its monthly budget report that government receipts surpassed spending by $10.98 billion last month. A year ago, the government ran a deficit of $2.85 billion in December.

The improvement reflected the fact that government receipts were up 12.1 percent from a year ago to $241.88 billion while government spending rose by a slower 5.6 percent to $230.9 billion. The figure for outlays still represented an all-time high for spending for any month."

While spending is still high and needs to come down, revenues are up and expenses seem to be slowing. Hopefully, they will start to shrink instead of rising slower.

A budget surplus is definitely a step in the right direction.

I blame the Bush tax cuts.

Budget deficit
Bush tax cuts