The Obama administration announced Friday the government ran a record-high $1.42 trillion budget deficit in fiscal-year 2009. In terms of percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), it was the worst year on record since the second world war, according to data from the Treasury and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Tax receipts for the year fell 16.6 percent, while spending soared 18.2 percent compared to fiscal-year 2008. The causes were rising unemployment, the economic slump, and the extraordinary measures taken by lawmakers to limit the economic meltdown that hit in autumn 2008. Consequently, the annual deficit rose 209 percent to the record dollar amount of $1.42 trillion, from $459 billion a year earlier. As a share of the economy, the 2009 deficit accounted for 10 percent of GDP, up from 3.2 percent in 2008. Just after the second world war, the 1945 U.S. budget deficit reached 21 percent of GDP.
