The big news over the last week was the U.S. Treasury Office’s release of the federal budget. A trend has formed in the federal budget since the recovery from the Great Recession. Federal tax receipts are way up, and federal spending is way down. The combination of these factors has cut the U.S. budget deficit in half.

In fact, the Treasury showed a budget surplus for the month of June. This was the first monthly budget surplus in over five years. This comes in the face of reports that the current Congress could be the least productive Congress in modern history. To date, the 113^th Congress has passed just 15 bills into law. Perhaps an unproductive and somewhat stalled Congress was exactly what was needed to fix the U.S. government budget.

Source: Arc of a Diver: The Budget Deficit’s Plunge by Liz Ann Sonders, Charles Schwab