It's the Business Cycle, Stupid

It's the seventh year of economic expansion (the last recession ended late in 2001) and as could have been expected tax, revenues to the federal government reflect it:

Federal revenue collections hit an all-time high in April, contributing to a further improvement in the budget deficit for the year.

Releasing its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Thursday that through the first seven months of this budget year, the deficit totals $80.8 billion, significantly below the $184.1 billion imbalance run up during the first seven months of the 2006 budget year.

So far this year, tax revenues total $1.505 trillion, an increase of 11.2 percent over the same period last year. ....

The Congressional Budget Office said that it now expects the deficit for all of 2007 to total between $150 billion and $200 billion. That would be a significant improvement from last year's deficit of $248.2 billion, which had been the lowest imbalance in four years.

The federal budget was in surplus for four years from 1998 through 2001 as the long economic expansion helped push revenues higher.

And 1998 was the eighth year of economic expansion, as the incompetents at Angry Bear would know if they would stop putting the hands over their ears, and saying "I can't hear you!".