Estimated taxes on businesses and the self-employed are collected in January, April, June, and September of every year. Guess what? Tax revenues spike in those months as a result and then go down in the other months.
https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/mthTreasStmt/mts1217.pdf
If you look at the previous four months, the government collected $349 billion in taxes during September 2017, and spent $344 billion. Wow! A $5 billion surplus!. Oh wait, in October they only collected $299 billion, and had a $63 billion deficit. And a $139 billion deficit in November, and a $23 billion deficit in December. So for those four months in aggregate, they ran a $220 billion deficit. But if you only look at September, it looks GREAT!
And it will look great if you look at January 2018. But you need to look at the next few months to see if there is a real trend. I can assure you that $42 billion will be gone in no time, and then some.
Oh, and by the way, even if the numbers were sustainable, your "paid off in no time" would be over 38 years in the future.
