This year’s spending to elect a president and members of Congress will hit at least $15.9 billion – putting 2024 on track to become the nation’s most expensive federal election, according to a new analysis from OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics.
Helping to drive up the price tag: blistering spending by outside groups, including deep-pocketed super PACs aiding Republicans. Outside spending – largely through independent expenditures such as advertising, mailings, canvassing and other activities to boost specific candidates – has reached roughly $2.6 billion. That’s nearly $1 billion more than groups like these spent at this point in the 2020 election, the analysis found.
And with that independent activity expected to surge in the final weeks before Election Day, OpenSecrets’ researchers project that total outside spending for the cycle will top $5 billion.
The top five megadonors to outside groups this cycle all support Republicans, led by Timothy Mellon, an heir to the Mellon banking fortune who has donated $125 million to a super PAC working to elect former President Donald Trump. That’s helped drive a major fundraising advantage to the conservative outside groups active in this election.
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WASHINGTON—The U.S. budget deficit topped $1.8 trillion in the latest fiscal year, driven by higher spending on interest and programs for older Americans, as the government faces a persistent gap between federal outlays and tax collections.
The new data comes as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic pick Kamala Harris are both proposing new tax and spending plans that are estimated to add trillions more to the deficit over the next decade.
In all, the government collected $4.92 trillion in revenue and spent $6.75 trillion in the year that ended Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which issued its estimates ahead of the official administration tallies expected later this month.