Financial Statements of the United States Government for the Fiscal Years Ended September 30, 2024, and 2023

Sustainability Financial Statements

The sustainability financial statements are comprised of the SLTFP, covering all federal government programs, and the SOSI and the SCSIA, covering social insurance programs (Social Security, Medicare, Railroad Retirement, and Black Lung programs). The sustainability financial statements are designed to illustrate the relationship between projected receipts and expenditures if current policy is continued over a 75-year time horizon.¹ In preparing the sustainability financial statements, management selects assumptions and data that it believes provide a reasonable basis to illustrate whether current policy is sustainable. Current policy is based on current law but includes several adjustments. In the SLTFP, notable adjustments to current law are: 1) projected spending, receipts, and borrowing levels assume raising or suspending the current statutory limit on federal debt; 2) continued discretionary appropriations are assumed throughout the projections period; 3) scheduled Social Security and Medicare Part A benefit payments are assumed to occur beyond the projected point of trust fund depletion; and 4) many mandatory programs with expiration dates prior to the end of the 75-year projection period are assumed to be reauthorized. In the SOSI, the one adjustment to current law is that scheduled Social Security and Medicare Part A benefit payments are assumed to occur beyond the projected point of trust fund depletions. Assumptions underlying such sustainability information do not consider changes in policy or all potential future events that could affect future income, future expenditures, and, hence, sustainability. The projections do not reflect any adverse economic consequences resulting from continuously rising debt levels. A large number of factors affect the sustainability financial statements and future events and circumstances cannot be estimated with certainty. Therefore, even if current policy is continued, there will be differences between the estimates in the sustainability financial statements and actual results, and those differences may be material. The unaudited RSI section of this Financial Report includes PV projections using different assumptions to illustrate the sensitivity of the sustainability financial statements to changes in certain assumptions. The sustainability financial statements are intended to help the readers understand current policy and the importance and magnitude of policy reforms necessary to make it sustainable.

By accounting convention, General Fund transfers to Medicare Parts B and D reported in the SOSI are eliminated when preparing the government-wide consolidated financial statements. The SOSI shows the projected General Fund transfers as eliminations that, under current law, would be used to finance the remainder of the expenditures in excess of revenues for Medicare Parts B and D reported in the SOSI. The SLTFP include all revenues (including general revenues) of the federal government.

Footnotes

¹ With the exception of the Black Lung program, which has a rolling 25-year projection period that begins on the September 30 valuation date each year. (Back to Content)

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Last modified 02/21/25