And now for the real cause of the U.S.’s economic maladies. From Ryan McMaken at mises.org:
For the first five months of the 2025 fiscal year, federal spending is coming in at the highest level ever. This is true even when we adjust for CPI inflation.
This largely reflects Biden-era spending since the current fiscal year began during October 2024, during the Biden administration. In 2025 dollars, federal spending for the current fiscal year so far has totaled 3.039 trillion dollars. This makes 2025’s spending total the highest ever and it’s coming in above the covid-era total (3.012 trillion) reached during the first five months of fiscal year 2021.
In nominal terms, the growth is even larger with federal spending so far this year coming in at about half a trillion more than the previous all-time high reached during 2021.
This data only covers the period through the end of February so it’s still too early to guess as to the full impact of any spending-cut initiatives coming out of the Trump administration. We do know that, in spite of many claims coming out of the administration, no significant impact can yet be seen in the federal spending data.
