WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. government ran a budget surplus of $113 billion in April, the Treasury Department reported Friday, $54 billion more than in the same month a year ago.

It was the first monthly surplus since January and the biggest monthly surplus since the $159 billion budget surplus of April 2008.

Tax receipts were $407 billion, up 28% versus April 2012, while spending was $294 billion, 13% more than in the year-earlier month.

April is typically a surplus month because of income-tax payments.

Through the first seven months of the 2013 fiscal year, the deficit is $488 billion, 32% lower than the same period last year.

The monthly number was about in line with a projection earlier this week from the Congressional Budget Office.

Some see the government’s improving finances as affecting a potential debt deal between President Barack Obama and Republicans. “With the deficit plunging, support for entitlement reform — which looked so promising in early April — has clearly faded,” wrote Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac Research Group in a note on Friday.

President Obama hosts a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders in 2012. Reuters

The U.S. is due to hit its borrowing limit on May 18, but Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew on Friday said the government will be able to keep paying its bills through Labor Day.

The Bipartisan Policy Center estimated on Thursday that the debt ceiling could be pushed out even farther, until sometime in October.

Congressional Republicans are mulling a wish list of demands they will make in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, including spending cuts. On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow the government to borrow money to pay bondholders if the government hits the debt ceiling. The White House calls such a move default by another name and has said Obama would veto it.

Lew on Friday urged lawmakers not to delay raising the borrowing limit.

“The anxiety caused to the U.S. and world economy by putting this off until the last minute is not good,” he said on the business news channel CNBC.