国际英语新闻:U.S. federal gov't budget deficit tops 260 million dollars in December

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. federal government ran a budget deficit of 260 million U.S. dollars in December, the Treasury Department figures revealed Friday.

The federal government raked in a revenue of 269.5 billion dollars in December, up 12 percent from the level of December 2011, while spending 269.7 billion dollars, down 17 percent from December 2011, said the department.

The budget gap for the first three months of the 2013 fiscal year, which began on Oct.1, totaled 292 billion dollars, 9 percent lower than in the first three months of the prior fiscal year.

The U.S. federal government budget deficit reached 1.1 trillion dollars in the 2012 fiscal year ending in September, surpassing the 1-trillion-dollar mark for the fourth straight year.

The White House and Congress struck a deal last week to avoid the "fiscal cliff," a combination of the year-end tax hikes and automatic spending cuts. The last-minute agreement would raise taxes on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans and allow a payroll tax cut of 2 percentage points to expire. The deal also postponed for two months the implementation of spending cuts that were originally scheduled to take effect in January.

The U.S. federal government technically reached its borrowing limit on Dec. 31. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the Congress last month that the Treasury Department would take " extraordinary measures" to create about 200 billion dollars of " headroom" to avoid a possible default.