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The US Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, is predicting a federal government budget deficit of around 1.1 trillion US dollars for fiscal year 2012.

A CBO report says that, when measured as a share of the nation’s GDP, the budget shortfall of 7 percent in the 2012 fiscal year would be nearly 2 percentage points below the deficit recorded in the 2011 fiscal year, but still higher than any deficit between 1947 and 2008. If these estimates prove accurate, it will mark the fourth fiscal year in a row that the US federal budget deficit exceeds the 1-trillion-dollar mark.

The pace of the US economic recovery has been slow since the recession ended in June 2009, and the CBO expects that, under current laws governing taxes and spending, the economy will continue to grow at a sluggish pace over the next two years.