Gloom, Despair, Agony on Me

Deep, dark depression, excessive misery!:

The U.S. federal budget surplus widened by 82% in January to $38.2 billion from $21 billion a year earlier, the Treasury Department reported Monday.
The surplus is slightly below the Congressional Budget Office estimate of about $40 billion. Read more.

January usually as a surplus month because many individuals must make estimated tax payments, analysts said.

Receipts rose 13% year-over-year to a record $260.6 billion, while outlays increased 6% to $222.4 billion, the Treasury said.

Individual income tax receipts totaled $154.5 billion in January. Corporate income tax receipts were $10.9 billion.

For the first four months of the 2007 fiscal year, the deficit was $42.2 billion, about 57.2% lower than the $98.4 billion deficit in the same period in the previous fiscal year.

For all of 2007, the CBO estimates a shortfall of about $200 billion, narrower than the $248 billion deficit in fiscal 2006.

But analysts at RBS Greenwich Capital believe this forecast is too pessimistic. They look for a drop in the deficit to around $155 billion in the fiscal year.

Those durn tax cuts...killing us all, they are!

If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all...Gloom, despair and agony on me!