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Federal Debt
About This Indicator
What Is the Federal Debt?
Everything the Treasury owes on its securities: to the public, including the Federal Reserve, and to trust funds such as Social Security's. Monthly since 1942.
Why Does It Matter?
Unlike a mortgage, it has no payoff date: maturing bonds are repaid by selling new ones. What matters is the interest, which competes with every other use of the budget, and whether lenders keep lending at affordable rates.
Is All Debt Bad?
Borrowing lets a government pay for a war or a deep recession faster than taxes could and spread the cost over years; the harder question is ordinary years. Every dollar is also someone's savings, from pension funds to foreign governments to Social Security's trust funds.
Can Politics Influence It?
Every tax and spending law changes its path, but much debt added in a term follows from earlier laws, and recessions add to it on their own.
Key Idea
The debt grew in dollars even from 1998 to 2001, years of budget surpluses, because trust fund surpluses are lent to the Treasury and counted here.
Not Scored
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas to 2000; Treasury since. Gross federal debt (govdebt.xlsx) for 1942-2000; Debt to the Penny from 2001.
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