Debt to the Penny

The official number

Debt to the Penny is a dataset published by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, part of the US Treasury. It reports total public debt outstanding for each business day, to the cent, split into debt held by the public and intragovernmental holdings. The daily series in the dataset goes back to 1993.

When a news report gives the national debt as of a specific date, this is almost always the source.

When it updates

Figures are published on business days and generally describe the previous business day, because the Treasury needs time to settle and record the day’s transactions. There are no figures for weekends or federal holidays, so the official number does not change between Friday’s record and Monday’s.

Large jumps on particular days are normal. Securities from Treasury auctions settle on set dates, interest is credited to trust funds at certain points in the month, and major payment dates such as Social Security disbursements or corporate tax deadlines move the numbers noticeably.

How this site uses it

The headline figure on this site starts from the latest Debt to the Penny value and its date, both shown on the front page. Between official updates, the live counter projects forward using the rate at which the debt has recently been growing. That projection is an estimate, and the methodology page explains exactly how it is calculated.

Anyone citing an exact figure should use the official value and its date rather than the live estimate of any debt clock, including this one.

Total debt versus debt subject to limit

Debt to the Penny reports total public debt outstanding. The debt ceiling applies to a slightly different measure, debt subject to limit, which treats a few items differently. The gap is small, but it explains why the two figures in Treasury reports never match exactly.

Getting the data

The dataset is free and open on the Treasury’s Fiscal Data portal, both as downloadable files and through a public API that needs no registration.