MOSCOW: The US budget deficit during the presidency of Joe Biden has hit the all-time high at US$6.6 trillion, according to Sputnik calculations based on data from the US Treasury Department.

The US government's expenses over three and a half years under Biden exceeded revenues by US$6.6 trillion - the highest in the entire history of these statistics.

Thus, in 2021, the indicator amounted to US$2.8 trillion, or to 13 per cent of GDP.

The following year, the negative balance decreased to US$1.4 trillion, or 6.3 per cent of GDP, but last year it increased to US$1.7 trillion, or 7.6 per cent of GDP. Over the first six months of this year, it amounted to US$758.2 billion, and the share of GDP on a rolling annual basis was 5.5 per cent.

His predecessor, Donald Trump, accumulated a total deficit of US$5.6 trillion. At the same time, under Trump, there was a maximum annual negative budget balance of US$3.1 trillion, or 15.5 per cent of GDP, in the coronavirus-peak year of 2020.

Barack Obama became the only American leader in this century who managed to reduce the US budget deficit by the end of his presidency, to US$2.2 trillion from US$5.1 trillion under George W. Bush. However, Bush was the last president under whom the US budget posted a full-year surplus of US$130 billion in 2001.

The US has been in a state of chronic excess of expenditures over income for almost a century; the last time there was a long period of surplus was from 1920 to 1930.

The only US leader after World War II with a budget surplus was Harry Truman (1946-1950), and the largest government spending surplus was under Ronald Reagan at US$1.34 trillion.

The US finances such a gigantic budget deficit from the national debt, which in July for the first time exceeded the US$35 trillion mark, and just two weeks later grew by another US$160 billion.