How Much the US Government Owes Today
The national debt to the dollar, from the Treasury’s own daily ledger, with the two things a debt clock cannot show: how fast it is being added, by calendar date and by the days between trillion-dollar milestones, and what it costs in interest against the taxes actually collected.
Crossed $40 trillion on August 18, 2026, 154 days after $39 trillion. The last flat stretch ran 174 days to July 3, 2025.
Latest read
The US government owed $40,094,590,636,301.70 on September 4, 2026, the Treasury's latest Debt to the Penny report: $32.41T held by the public and $7.68T owed to its own trust funds. The total is $2.66T higher than a year ago, $7.3B a day, and is being added faster than the $2.09T added over the year before. Over the last 30 days it rose $265B. It first crossed $40 trillion on August 18, 2026, 154 days after $39 trillion. Interest over the trailing twelve months came to $1.36T against $1.21T the year before, and in fiscal 2026 through July 2026 it took 26.1% of net receipts, up from 23.4% over the same months a year earlier. The average rate on marketable debt is 3.48% against a 10-year yield of 4.78%, so the repricing is not finished.
Sources, methodology & freshnessLast updated 2026-09-04 · Open ↓Close ↑
The level, to the penny
1993–present, daily. At publication (September 4, 2026) the total read $40.095T, 80.8% of it held by the public. Shaded stretches are runs of 60+ calendar days in which the total stayed within 0.15% of itself; the rule finds 11 of them, and each coincides with a binding debt limit. The public/intragovernmental split is daily from March 31, 2005 and appears only at month ends before that, so the public line and the shaded gap start there. Before the last ten years the chart plots every fifth session.
Trillion-dollar milestones
The first day the total closed at or above each round trillion, and the days since the one before. The last five milestones arrived 151 days apart on average; the five before them, 181 days.
| Level | First reached | Days since prior |
|---|---|---|
| $40T | August 18, 2026 | 154 |
| $39T | March 17, 2026 | 147 |
| $38T | October 21, 2025 | 71 |
| $37T | August 11, 2025 | 263 |
| $36T | November 21, 2024 | 118 |
| $35T | July 26, 2024 | 210 |
| $34T | December 29, 2023 | 105 |
| $33T | September 15, 2023 | 92 |
| $32T | June 15, 2023 | 255 |
| $31T | October 3, 2022 | 245 |
| $30T | January 31, 2022 | 46 |
| $29T | December 16, 2021 | 290 |
Show the earlier 24 milestones, back to $5 trillion in 1996
| $28T | March 1, 2021 | 151 |
| $27T | October 1, 2020 | 114 |
| $26T | June 9, 2020 | 35 |
| $25T | May 5, 2020 | 28 |
| $24T | April 7, 2020 | 159 |
| $23T | October 31, 2019 | 262 |
| $22T | February 11, 2019 | 333 |
| $21T | March 15, 2018 | 188 |
| $20T | September 8, 2017 | 588 |
| $19T | January 29, 2016 | 427 |
| $18T | November 28, 2014 | 407 |
| $17T | October 17, 2013 | 412 |
| $16T | August 31, 2012 | 290 |
| $15T | November 15, 2011 | 319 |
| $14T | December 31, 2010 | 213 |
| $13T | June 1, 2010 | 197 |
| $12T | November 16, 2009 | 245 |
| $11T | March 16, 2009 | 167 |
| $10T | September 30, 2008 | 396 |
| $9T | August 31, 2007 | 682 |
| $8T | October 18, 2005 | 642 |
| $7T | January 15, 2004 | 688 |
| $6T | February 26, 2002 | 2195 |
| $5T | February 23, 1996 | — |
What it costs
The rate being paid
Who holds what
From the Monthly Statement of the Public Debt as of August 31, 2026, when the total stood at $40.18T. Marketable securities, the ones that trade, are $31.83T (79%); the trust funds hold $8.11T of Government Account Series, which never trade and are the shaded gap on the chart above. Bills are 22.8% of marketable debt, the share that reprices within a year.
Composition of the public debt, August 2026
Sixty years, quarterly
The refinancing arithmetic, and why there is no forward study
The Treasury pays an average of 3.48% on $31.83T of marketable debt while the market charges 4.78% for ten-year money. If every marketable security were re-issued at that yield, the annual interest bill would be $415B higher. That is arithmetic on today’s gap rather than a forecast: the gap closes from both sides as old coupons roll off and as yields move, and bonds issued in the low-rate years will not mature for decades. The bills share says how much of the book reprices inside a year.
Why this page carries no “what happened next” study. Every tool on this site tests its reading against the unconditional baseline before it ships. This series cannot be tested that way: outside the 11 flat stretches it only rises, so any condition on a level or a milestone selects a date range rather than a state, and the forward returns it reports are the equity market’s own history under a new label. A study that would print whatever the calendar printed is not published here. The debt against the economy, which does fall as well as rise, is on Debt to GDP.
Method
Debt to the Penny, as published by the Treasury for each business day on the following business day. The total is the gross public debt outstanding; it is not net of the Treasury’s cash balance, and it counts securities the Federal Reserve holds as held by the public, because the Fed is not the Treasury.
Changes over 30, 90 and 365 days are taken against the last reading on or before that calendar date and divided by the days actually elapsed, never by row count. A milestone is the first close at or above a round trillion. Flat stretches are found by one fixed rule with no dates typed in.
Interest expense is summed across every line the Treasury publishes for each category, including the negative inflation-compensation months on TIPS. Receipts are net of refunds. The share is computed only over months both series cover, and each block on the page carries its own through-date.
Unfunded obligations, state and local debt, agency debt outside the Treasury, and who owns the debt held by the public (foreign holders, the Fed, funds and households are a separate Treasury report). The long-run quarterly series is reference-dated and revised by FRED; the daily ledger is never revised.
Crossed $40 trillion on August 18, 2026, 154 days after $39 trillion. The last flat stretch ran 174 days to July 3, 2025.
How US National Debt Works
- 1Read the Treasury's daily ledgerThe total is the Treasury's Debt to the Penny series, published every business day for the prior business day since April 1993. It splits into debt held by the public (Treasury securities owned by investors, the Federal Reserve and foreign holders) and intragovernmental holdings (mostly the Social Security and other trust funds holding Government Account Series securities). The daily split begins in March 2005; before that it appears at month ends.
- 2Measure the pace by date, never by rowThe change over 30, 90 and 365 days compares the latest total against the last reading on or before the same calendar date that many days earlier, then divides by the days actually elapsed. Trillion-dollar milestones are the first day the total closed at or above each round level, and the days between them are the pace stated in plain terms.
- 3Detect the flat stretches mechanicallyA flat stretch is any run of at least 60 calendar days in which the total stayed within 0.15% of itself. The rule is applied to the whole series with no dates typed in; every run it finds since 1993 coincides with a period when a statutory debt limit was binding and the Treasury was running down cash and using extraordinary measures instead of borrowing. The 30 days after each run show the catch-up.
- 4Cost the debt from the Treasury's own interest and receipts statementsInterest expense is the monthly Treasury series summed across every line for the two categories: interest on public issues and interest on Government Account Series. Receipts come from the Monthly Treasury Statement, net of refunds. Interest publishes a month ahead of receipts, so the share of receipts is computed only over the months both cover, never by dividing the two fiscal-year-to-date figures as published.
- 5State the rate being paid beside the rate being chargedThe Treasury's average interest rate on marketable debt is the coupon the government is actually paying across everything outstanding. Beside it sits the current 10-year yield from our own daily series. The gap between them is the repricing still to come as older, cheaper debt matures, and the share of marketable debt in bills is the portion that reprices within a year.