National debt.
In plain English
The national debt is the accumulated total the federal government owes, built up over decades of running deficits and borrowing to cover them. Each year the government spends more than it collects, it borrows the gap by issuing Treasury securities, and those add to the debt. It is owed to a mix of the public, including domestic and foreign investors and other governments, and to itself through federal trust funds. The Treasury publishes the running total in real time, so the current figure is always available from the primary source rather than from memory.
01Why it matters
The national debt drives how much the government spends on interest and frames long-running debates over taxes and spending, so understanding it, and how it differs from a single year's deficit, helps make sense of budget news.
02The math, step by step
Think of the deficit as one year's shortfall charged to a credit card, and the national debt as the full balance on that card after many years. A year with a smaller deficit still adds to the debt; the balance only shrinks if the government runs a surplus and pays some down.
03What this is NOT
It is not the same as the deficit. The deficit is the gap in a single year. The national debt is the total of all past deficits minus surpluses, the accumulated balance, not one year's shortfall.
04Receipts
Every figure on this page is sourced to a primary document. Tap to open the original.