People are right to doubt government data when Trump's Treasury Department under Scott Bessent leads off with this chart crime of September 2025 federal outlays

 You can access the Treasury's Monthly Treasury Statement here to see for yourself.

The OUTLAYS BY FUNCTION for September 2025 in the Figure 1 graphic DO NOT ADD UP TO $346 BILLION, as stated.

They add up to $560 billion.

The receipts DO ADD UP, almost, to $543 billion.

That the graphic indicates $544 billion, not $543 billion, is another clue that the entire thing is a tendentiously fabricated interpretation of the data from within the report, obviously. 

Well duh.

Meanwhile that "Other" category isn't a Red Flag for nothing!

"Hello! Hey! Yes, you! We're about to pull a fast one! Pay Attention!" 

In the end outlays of $560 billion minus receipts of $543 billion = a September DEFICIT of $17 billion, NOT A F^@KING SURPLUS OF $198 BILLION.

They are asking you to deny the evidence of your own eyes, and they know it. 

It's a total lie, as in Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

When you can't trust the U.S. Treasury Department, who can you trust?

 

The upshot is that Fiscal Year 2025 ends with a deficit of $1.973 trillion, far worse than FY 2024's $1.816 trillion . . . by 8.6%.

But the Trump Regime wants you to think the deficit is smaller than in 2024, at $1.775 trillion, that they're cutting spending by closing agencies and departments and firing federal employees, and increasing revenues through tariffs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and that the Big Ugly Bill is working.

LIES, DAMN LIES, I tell you. 

 

Treasury Secretary Bessent says we have to stop the rigged Chicom economy by abandoning free market principles just like them

 

 Trump administration will set price floors across range of industries to combat China, Bessent says

... “When you are facing a nonmarket economy like China, then you have to exercise industrial policy,” Bessent told Sara Eisen at CNBC’s Invest in America Forum in Washington, D.C.

“So we’re going to set price floors and the forward buying to make sure that this doesn’t happen again and we’re going to do it across a range of industries,” the Treasury secretary said, without naming specific industries the administration was looking at beyond rare earths. ...

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” the Treasury secretary said when asked about additional equity stakes. “When we get an announcement like this week with China on the rare earths, you realize we have to be self-sufficient, or we have to be sufficient with our allies.”

The Trump administration will not take stakes in nonstrategic industries, Bessent said. “We do have to be very careful not to overreach,” he said. ...

 

 

The Department of the Treasury of the United States isn't supposed to be politicized like this

 

 

 

 

 

The BEA and BLS aren't like this.

Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is on the same page as George Will

 

Bessent: 'I Kind of Like Mamdani Winning'

Max Mitchell, UnHerd

 

 

 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent once agreed to call two different houses his “principal residence” at the same time just like Lisa Cook ROFLMAO

 

Bessent made mortgage claims similar to ones Trump cited to try to fire Fed’s Cook: Report

The fiscal year is rapidly coming to a close, and Trump has spent us $1.973 trillion deeper into the hole with one month left to go, compared with Biden's last year at $1.897 trillion through August

 

Meanwhile ...

... [Charlie] Kirk, who had millions of social media followers, co-founded the non-profit Turning Point USA in 2012 as a teenager, which he dubbed a 'national student movement.' 

Its mission is to 'identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.' ...

 

Pattern development: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent first mixed it up with Elon Musk over an IRS appointment and now with Bill Pulte for bad-mouthing him to Trump

 

Treasury Secretary Bessent tells a whopper

 

Bessent: Tariff Income And Fiscal Improvement Have Made The U.S. Bond Market The Best Performing In The Developed World

 

These jokers have added $1.2 trillion to the national debt in TWO months.

 

The 10-year US Treasury has returned 1.013% nominal in the last twelve months, -1.419% real. 

Trump's deficit year to date is $112 billion higher through July than Biden's through July last year, up 7.4%

 

The Treasury Secretary is such a kiss-ass and knows damn well that the Fed's so-called full employment mandate was a set of handcuffs put on the Fed in 1978

And why did the Congress do that to the Fed?

So the Congress could evade responsibility for high unemployment as well as for high inflation, that's why.

A bunch of cowards six ways to Sunday they are.

Besides, core personal consumption expenditures is the Fed's key metric, as everyone knows, and that is an inflation metric, not an employment metric. 

And The Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act specifically recognizes that reducing inflation is the Fed's main job, actually mandating ZERO inflation, not 2% inflation as widely misinterpreted. 

Meanwhile there is another report of employment besides the total non-farm payrolls report which the Fed can consult, and it shows employment continues near all-time highs in July.

No change to DFF was the appropriate response of the Fed to persistent core inflation way above 2%.  

 

Bessent: How Can The Fed Set Rates When Jobs Data Is This Broken? "This Was A Five Standard Deviation Mistake"

 

 

 

 

 

Trump's $170 billion tax hike on the American consumer

 The seasonally-adjusted annual rate of Trump's tariffs leaped from $96 billion in 1Q to $266 billion in 2Q.

The federal government farts through $20 billion every day, so this annualized tariff revenue goes Poof in less than two weeks, matching just 3.6% of federal outlays.

The numbskulls in the US Senate like Josh Hawley want to redistribute these tax revenues in the form of rebate checks to the taxpayers.

Wouldn't it have been easier and more efficient and more fair not to have taxed us in the first place?

Note that Donald Trump's Bureau of Economic Analysis, run by Howard Lutnick, still must call this what it is, taxes on imports lol, despite what his Treasury Secretary was still saying in June:

Bessent claims tariffs aren’t taxes.

 

 

 

Elon Musk/DOGE cuts failure continues: Federal deficit spending is 5% higher year to date through June than it was last year at this time, according to the monthly statement of the U. S. Treasury Department

 The fiscal year to date deficit October 2023-June 2024 was $1.273258 trillion.

The fiscal year to date deficit October 2024-June 2025 is $1.337372 trillion, $64.114 billion higher than a year ago, or 5%. 

 

I guess stocks didn't like the monthly Treasury statement indicating worsening fiscal conditions lol

 

Five months in, the Trump administration still doesn't have spending under control with the fiscal year to date deficit running 13.5% higher than last year to this point

Deficit FY 2024 through May: $1.202 trillion

Deficit FY 2025 through May: $1.364 trillion

Difference: $162 billion MORE in the hole than last year at this time

I don't care what Elon Musk's DOGE claims, the May numbers from the US Department of the Treasury do not lie.

A tax increase was never more needed. 

 

 

No DOGE savings show up in March US Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the Federal Government, but higher deficits sure do, $242 billion higher year to date than last year

 

 The fiscal year to date deficit last year was $1.064691 trillion.

The fiscal year to date deficit this year is $1.307132 trillion, $242.441 billion higher. 

The monthly US Treasury statement may be found here.

Former S&P sovereign bond unit executive who participated in the Obama era 2011 credit downgrade basically calls Trump's America a banana republic, and DOGE not a proper government department

 WSJ: What about DOGE’s accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system?

Kraemer: We don’t have all the details of what they took and on what basis. It seems highly irregular. People from a department, which is not even a proper government department, that have gone and gotten access to data, that we have to assume is quite, I should say sensitive, which doesn’t belong in the hands of unelected individuals. 

WSJ: Have you ever seen anything like this before?

Kraemer: Yes, I think I have seen this. Regimes that don’t respect checks and balances. But they tend to be more in the emerging markets. This is exactly what sets rich and poor countries apart, right? It’s the qualities of institutions, the rule of law, the transparency of decision-making. 

So have I seen this? Yes. But have I seen it in an advanced economy, in an OECD member country? No, I have not.

The whole thing is here.

Obama appointed judge, Paul Engelmayer, issues sweeping order banning Musk and his allies from accessing the US Department of Treasury payments system

 Federal Judge Blocks Elon Musk’s DOGE From Treasury System: Order requires those who have accessed payment records without proper security clearance to destroy them

A federal judge in New York temporarily restricted the ability of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access the Treasury Department payment system, saying that doing so was necessary to prevent the potential disclosure of sensitive and confidential information. 

The early Saturday order by Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, precludes officials without proper background checks and security clearances from accessing the payment system through at least next Friday, including political appointees and special government appointees. It also orders any prohibited person who has had access to the records since President Trump’s inauguration to destroy them. The judge set a hearing for Friday.

Some 19 blue-state attorneys general filed the case Friday evening, saying that Musk’s DOGE initiative risks interference with the payment of funds appropriated by Congress. 

Engelmayer said the states were likely to win on arguments that the Trump administration exceeded its authority in allowing broader access to the payment system. He also said the states faced irreparable harm without court intervention for now, including “the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.” ...

Well thank God.

None of these people have security clearances. The say so of President Trump is not a security clearance.

The obscenity of US national debt at $34.5 trillion notwithstanding, the value of grand total foreign ownership of it is up almost $529 billion year over year in March 2024 to a record high of . . .

. . . $8.091 trillion.

An almost 7% increase.

Here.

Meanwhile:

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio told the Financial Times a few days ago that he is concerned the soaring U.S. debt levels will make Treasurys less attractive “particularly from international buyers worried about the US debt picture and possible sanctions.”

So far, that hasn’t been the case: Foreign holdings of U.S. federal debt stood at $8.1 trillion in March, up 7% from a year ago, according to Treasury Department data released Wednesday. Risk-free Treasurys are still seen as an attractive place to park cash, but that could change if the U.S. doesn’t rein in its finances.

On an average monthly basis, yields on all UST peaked for this cycle last October, save for 1Y which peaked last September.

What, me worry?

 

Compromise spending bill passes US House 286-134 bringing fiscal year 2024 federal discretionary spending to $1.659 trillion through September

 WASHINGTON — The House voted 286-134 on Friday to pass a sweeping $1.2 trillion government funding bill, sending it to the Senate just hours before the deadline to prevent a shutdown. ...

The bill, released early Thursday, funds the departments of Homeland Security, State, Labor, Defense, Health and Human Services and various other agencies. Together with the $459 billion bill passed earlier this month, it fully funds the federal government to the tune of $1.659 trillion through September, after months of stopgap bills and negotiations.

More here.

The Roll Call Vote is here, if you want to check how your representative voted. 

The argument is perennially NOT about deficit spending, but deficit spending on WHAT. 

The projected tax shortfall for all programs for fiscal 2024 is $1.582 trillion, more than half of which will be net interest expense of $0.870 trillion on the exploding national debt. Interest payments on what we have already borrowed now exceed defense outlays of $0.822 trillion.

CBO in early February estimated fiscal 2024 discretionary spending at $1.739 trillion, so today's bill "saves" a mere $80 billion off that.

Mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. is estimated at $3.908 trillion for fiscal 2024.

It's obvious that spending should be cut and taxes raised, but no one has the courage for either.

They should just agree to do both and let the chips fall where they may. Everyone out here will be pissed, vote accordingly, and it would be a wash politically.

Current national debt is $34.5612 trillion and rising.

Despite US Treasury department manipulation of the yield curve last week and another Fed pause, yields still average above five in the aggregate

 We saw a much bigger surge into bonds in March, but yields persisted.

With inflation, employment, and nominal GDP all still strong, Treasury tricks are unlikely to unravel this.

Cash such as VMFXX at 4.21% ytd and total stock market such as VTSAX at 13.92% ytd continue to trounce bonds ytd. VBTLX is still down 0.39% ytd. AGG is down 3.46% ytd.