The US budget deficit will reach $368 billion this year before any war costs are added in, the Congressional Budget Office has announced.
The previous CBO forecast called for a $348 billion shortfall for the 2005 fiscal year that began on October 1st.
Due to a technical quirk, the latest number does not include billions of dollars needed to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and analysts said these must be added in to get a true picture of the red ink.
The previous forecast assumed $115 billion of war costs.
"As a result of this technicality, we think it would be prudent to add roughly $100 billion to the CBO's fiscal year 2005 budget deficit estimate," Lehman Brothers said in a research note.
The White House is shortly expected to ask for about $80 billion to pay for war costs.
The CBO numbers also showed an improved outlook for the deficit over the next 10 years, according to a source close to the figures.
The agency forecast a cumulative shortfall of $855 billion from 2006 to 2015. That is far better than the agency's last 10-year forecast that totalled $2.3 trillion between 2005 and 2014.