Editorial policy

This page explains how NationalDebtFacts decides what to publish, where its figures come from, what is automated and what is not, and what happens when something is wrong. It applies to every page on the site, the news feed and the posts published on social media.

Where the figures come from

Every figure on this site comes from an official public dataset: the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Congressional Budget Office, federal statistical agencies such as the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the World Bank. Market prices come from named price providers. Each source is named, with its update frequency and its limits, on the methodology page.

Figures are shown as the source publishes them. Where the site derives a value — debt per person, debt against GDP, the live estimate between two Treasury publications — the calculation is documented, and the underlying official figure is shown alongside it with its date. The site does not use unnamed sources, leaked figures or numbers from social media.

How news items are made

The news page is generated by a script that checks official sources twice a day. When a new release appears — a debt report, a Treasury auction, the monthly budget statement, a Fed decision, a CBO or GAO report — it fills a fixed, human-written template with the figures of that release and links to the source.

• No news item is written by an AI model, and none is rewritten from another publisher’s article.
• Whether a figure “rose” or “fell” is decided by comparing the data, not chosen by a writer.
• Quotations are taken only from official summaries published by the agency itself.
• Articles by other publishers appear only as a headline, the outlet’s name and a link. They are found automatically by topic and are not endorsed.
• Once published, an item is not silently edited. If a template changes, it applies to new items only.

How social media posts are made

Posts on the site’s social media profiles are generated automatically from the same data and the same templates as the news page. They carry the same figures, link back to the page they come from, and are not written by an AI model. Where a platform requires automated content or automated accounts to be labelled, the posts and the profile are labelled accordingly.

The site does not buy followers, run paid political promotion or reply to other accounts automatically.

Estimates and update cadence

Data is refreshed twice a day, and some figures are updated live in your browser from the source. Official data is published with a delay — the Treasury reports the debt a few business days in arrears — so the running debt figure is an estimate between publications. Every estimate is labelled as one, and the last official figure is shown with its date. Monthly and quarterly series are updated when their publisher releases them, not more often.

Corrections

If a figure, a label or a sentence on this site is wrong, please report it using the email address on the imprint page. Include the page address and, if you can, the source that shows the correct value. Reports are checked against the original dataset.

Confirmed errors in the site’s own text or calculations are corrected as soon as possible. Where an error affected a published news item, the correction is noted rather than the item being quietly replaced. If the error is in the official source itself, the site follows the publisher’s revision.

Independence and neutrality

This site is not affiliated with the US government, the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve or usdebtclock.org. It takes no position on tax or spending policy, supports no party or candidate, and does not accept payment to publish, change or omit a figure.

Wording is chosen to describe, not to alarm or reassure. Where interpretation cannot be avoided — for example which population to divide the debt by — the options are shown and the reasoning is explained.

Use of AI

No figure on this site is produced by an AI model, and no article, explainer or news item is written by one. Software tools may assist with programming the site. If an illustration generated with AI is ever used, it will be labelled as such and will never be presented as a photograph or as data.

What this site is not

NationalDebtFacts is an information service. It is not financial, investment, tax or legal advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Figures can be delayed or revised by their publishers; for decisions, use the official source and a qualified adviser.

Who is responsible

The person responsible for the content of this site is named on the imprint page, which also gives a postal address and an email address. How the site is funded is explained separately, on the page about how we make money.