The US federal budget deficit soared to US$569 billion in the first four months of the current fiscal year, the highest on record for this period, the Treasury Department reported on Wednesday.

The deficit for October 2008 through January 2009 was six times more than the red ink during the year-ago period and has already surpassed the imbalance for all of last year, which was US$454.8 billion, a full-year record.

In the first four months, the government's revenues totaled US$773.5 billion, down by 10.2 percent from the year-ago period, reflecting weaker corporate tax revenues and falling individual tax payments as a result of a deepening recession.

Government spending over the period, however, shot up by 41.3 percent from a year ago to US$1.34 trillion. Much of that surge reflected massive costs for the financial bailout package the Congress approved last October.

For January alone, the federal budget deficit totaled US$83.8 billion, in contrast to a surplus of US$17.8 billion in the same month last year. Economists had been expecting a smaller imbalance of US$78 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the federal budget deficit will hit an all-time high of US$1.2 trillion  in the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30, 2009.

The estimate doesn't include the cost of a huge economic stimulus bill that US President-elect Barack Obama is seeking approval from Congress.

House and Senate negotiators on Wednesday agreed to pare the cost of the bill to US$789 billion, smaller than the Senate's US$838 billion bill approved on Tuesday and an US$819 billion version of the legislation passed last month by the House.

Private economists estimate that the budget deficit for this current fiscal year will hit US$1.6 trillion.

In the 2007 fiscal year, the federal budget deficit dropped by 34.4 percent to US$162 billion, a five-year low since an imbalance of US$159 billion in 2002, reflecting faster growth in government revenues than spending.

The 2002 performance marked the first budget deficit after four consecutive years of budget surpluses.

(Xinhua News Agency February 12, 2009)