The U.S. federal government reported a budget deficit of nearly 86 billion U.S. dollars in December, the U.S. Treasury Department announced on Thursday.

That brought the total budget deficit of the first three months of the 2012 budget year to 321.7 billion dollars, less than the 368.9 billion dollars in the same period a year earlier.

The U.S. federal government raked in a revenue of 239.9 billion dollars in December, and registered outlays of 325.9 billion dollars.

In the first three month of this budget year, the U.S. government collected 555.4 billion dollars. That was up 4.4 percent from a year ago. Meanwhile, it spent 877.2 billion dollars, down 2.6 percent from a year ago.

The U.S. federal government registered a 1.299-trillion-dollar budget deficit for the 2011 fiscal year ending September, evidence of the mounting budgetary pressure facing the world's largest economy.

The Obama administration said on Thursday that it has requested Congress to raise the federal government's borrowing limit since the government was expected to come within 100 billion dollars of the current 15.2-trillion-dollar debt ceiling.

Xinhua