WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. federal budget deficit is running much slower through the first ten months of the current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2006, the Treasury Department reported Friday.

    Data released by the Treasury showed that the budget deficit through July totaled 157.3 billion dollars, down from the red ink of 239.6 billion dollars in the same period a year ago.

    So far in this fiscal year, the government's revenue hit a record of 2.12 trillion dollars, while its spending also set an all-time high of 2.27 trillion dollars.

    For July, the federal government recorded a budget deficit of 36.3 billion dollars, up from 33.2 billion dollar registered for the same month last year.

    Revenue in July were 170.4 billion dollars, while spending stood at 206.8 billion dollars. Both revenue and spending were records for the month.

    At present, the Bush administration is predicting that the federal budget deficit will fall to about 205 billion dollars in the fiscal year that ends in September.

    That imbalance, down significantly from the deficit of 244 billion dollars the White House forecast in February, would be the lowest in five years and an improvement from the 248.2 billion deficit recorded in the 2006 fiscal year.

    But the Congressional Budget Office now is projecting the deficit for the full fiscal year to be 150 billion dollars to 200 billion dollars.

    U.S. government budget deficit set a record of 413 billion dollars in 2004. In the budget sent to Congress in February for 2008, the Bush administration projected the government could eliminate the deficit completely and return to a surplus by 2012.

    The federal budget was in surplus for four years from 1998 through 2001.