The U.S. government posted a $39 billion budget deficit for January after a $119 billion monthly surplus a year earlier, as revenues dipped and one-time costs, including the bailout of a union pension fund, pushed outlays sharply higher, the Treasury Department said on Friday, Reuters reported. The report, which comes as Treasury employs extraordinary cash management measures to avoid breaching the federal debt limit, showed receipts at $447 billion last month, down $18 billion, or 4%, from January 2022. Outside of the one-time costs, the budget data did not show major shifts from recent trends of slightly slowing revenues and rising costs for Medicare, Social Security and interest on the public debt.
