Live snapshot · U.S. Treasury & Federal Reserve data

U.S. Fiscal Debt Monitor

The federal debt, who holds it, how it's structured, what it costs, and how revenue and spending break down — then the monetary side: the Federal Reserve's own balance sheet, the money supply, and the policy tools that set the interest rate the debt above gets charged. Pulled directly from Treasury's Fiscal Data API, the Monthly Treasury Statement, the Fed's H.4.1 release, and FRED/BEA.

01

Debt outstanding

Total public debt outstanding is the sum of debt held by the public (sold in the open market) and intragovernmental holdings (mainly Social Security and other trust funds that hold non-marketable Treasury securities). It has grown every fiscal year since 2001.

Source: Treasury Fiscal Data, Debt to the Penny · figures as of Sep 8, 2026 unless noted

Total public debt outstanding, fiscal year-end

Debt held by the public vs. intragovernmental holdings, $ trillions

Source: Treasury, Debt to the Penny ↗

View data table

Snapshot, Sep 8, 2026

Latest daily figure

$40.08T
Total public debt
$32.39T
Held by the public (80.8%)
$7.70T
Intragovernmental (19.2%)
Debt has risen roughly $2.4 trillion since fiscal year-end 2025 ($37.64T on Sep 30, 2025) — a pace of about $220 billion a month. Total debt first crossed $40 trillion in August 2026.
A one-day snapshot moves with the Treasury's cash and auction calendar, so day-to-day swings of $10–50B are normal and not a signal of a shift in trend.

Debt vs. the money supply vs. the Fed's balance sheet

Indexed to Dec 2002 = 100 (common start date; the Fed's weekly balance-sheet series begins Dec 2002), annual, 2000–2026. A single index axis is used instead of a dual axis so relative growth rates stay directly comparable.

Source: Treasury Debt to the Penny ↗; FRED M2SL ↗; FRED WALCL ↗

Since 2002, the Fed's balance sheet has grown roughly 9.2× (mostly in three bursts: 2008, 2020, and 2023's bank-crisis lending), total public debt about 6.3×, and M2 about 4.0×. The Fed's own holdings grow in short, sharp steps tied to specific interventions; debt and M2 grow more steadily.
02

Holders of the debt

Roughly a fifth of the debt is owed by the government to itself (Social Security, Medicare and other trust funds). Of the rest, the Federal Reserve, foreign investors, and U.S. mutual funds, banks, pensions and insurers are the largest holders.

Source: U.S. Treasury Bulletin, Estimated Ownership of U.S. Treasury Securities (OFS-2) · latest fully reported quarter: Mar 31, 2026

Who owns the $39.1T in debt outstanding (Mar 31, 2026)

By major holder category, $ billions

Source: Treasury Bulletin, Estimated Ownership of U.S. Treasury Securities (OFS-2) ↗

Official (Fed + trust funds) Foreign & international U.S. private investors

How the pie splits

30.8%
Foreign & official (Fed + trust funds)
24.0%
Foreign & international investors
69.2%
Held domestically
The Federal Reserve's own portfolio (SOMA) holds an estimated $4.39T, down from a 2022 peak near $5.8T as the Fed continues to let securities roll off (quantitative tightening).
Foreign & international holdings have grown from $9.05T (Mar 2025) to $9.36T (Mar 2026) — up in dollar terms even as their share of total debt has drifted down over the past decade.
View data table

Top 10 foreign & international holders

$ billions and % of all foreign-held Treasury securities, Dec 2025

† Belgium, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and Ireland are financial centers, not primarily end holders: Belgium and Luxembourg host Euroclear and Clearstream, the international settlement depositories much of Europe (and beyond) uses to hold securities, so their totals mostly reflect custody accounts for other countries' investors rather than Belgian or Luxembourgish savings. Ireland is a major fund-domicile hub for the same reason. The Cayman Islands' total is dominated by U.S. and global hedge funds — largely the "basis trade" — routing purchases through Cayman-domiciled entities, and the Fed has separately estimated the true (uncounted) hedge-fund position there at closer to $2 trillion than the ~$420B TIC records. Treasury's TIC data attributes holdings to the country where the custodian sits, not the ultimate beneficial owner, so figures for these four should be read as "assets custodied in," not "owned by."

Source: Treasury International Capital (TIC) System, Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities ↗

03

Maturity structure ("tenure")

Treasury borrows across maturities from 4-week bills to 30-year bonds. A shorter average maturity means more of the debt has to be refinanced — and re-priced at prevailing rates — sooner.

Source: Treasury Monthly Statement of the Public Debt and TBAC presentations · composition as of Jul 31, 2026; maturity statistics as of Q1 FY2026 (Dec 2025)

Outstanding marketable debt by original maturity class

$ billions, Jul 31, 2026

Source: Treasury, Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, Table 1 ↗

Average maturity of marketable debt

~70 mo.
Avg. maturity (≈5.8 yrs), Dec 2025
~33%
Of privately-held marketable debt matures within 12 months
65 → 75 → 70
Months: Dec 2020 → May 2023 peak → Dec 2025
Treasury lengthened average maturity sharply after 2020 as rates fell, then began leaning back on bills as issuance needs grew. A third of marketable debt rolling over within a year means the "cost of debt" (Section 4) resets quickly when rates move.
Bills (maturities of one year or less) are 17.6% of total debt outstanding — above Treasury's own informal guideline of keeping bills near 15–20% of the total.

When today's marketable debt comes due

Outstanding principal by calendar year of maturity, $ billions, as of Jul 31, 2026 — built from every individual outstanding Treasury security, not an estimate

Source: Treasury, Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, Table 3 — aggregated from CUSIP-level security data by maturity date

$7.6T of today's marketable debt matures before the end of calendar 2026 alone (the remaining ~5 months), and $20.0T — nearly two-thirds of all marketable debt — comes due within the next 5 years (through 2030); $24.0T, over three-quarters, within 8 years (through 2033). None of that is "new" borrowing; refinancing it simply means auctioning new securities to replace the old ones, but every refinancing resets that slice of debt to whatever interest rate prevails at the time.
04

Cost of the debt

The average rate the government pays across all outstanding securities has more than doubled since 2021 as older, low-rate debt matures and is replaced at today's higher rates. That has pushed interest expense into one of the largest single lines in the federal budget.

Source: Treasury Average Interest Rates on U.S. Treasury Securities and Interest Expense on the Debt Outstanding · rates as of Aug 31, 2026

Average interest rate on outstanding debt

Total interest-bearing debt, fiscal year-end (%), 2001–2026 — Treasury's published series begins January 2001; we could not locate a reliable Treasury figure for 1995–2000

Source: Treasury, Average Interest Rates on U.S. Treasury Securities ↗

What it costs, right now

3.49%
Avg. rate, all interest-bearing debt (Aug 2026)
3.48%
Avg. rate, marketable debt
3.56%
Avg. rate, non-marketable debt
$1.268T
Accrued interest expense, FY2026 YTD (Oct '25–Aug '26, 11 mo.)
$1.220T
Accrued interest expense, full FY2025
On a budget (cash-outlay) basis — the figure that counts against the deficit — net interest on the public debt was $1.170T through the first 10 months of FY2026, already above the $1.013T spent over the same months of FY2025, and on pace to be the second-largest federal budget line after Social Security and health programs (Section 8).
05

Composition of the debt

About four-fifths of federal debt is marketable — bought and sold by investors — split mainly between Treasury notes and bills. The rest is non-marketable, dominated by the special-issue securities held inside government trust funds.

Source: Treasury Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, Table 1 · as of Jul 31, 2026 ($39.77T total)

Debt outstanding by security type

$ billions, Jul 31, 2026

Source: Treasury, Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, Table 1 ↗

View data table

Marketable vs. non-marketable: what's the difference?

79.1%
Marketable ($31.46T)
20.9%
Non-marketable ($8.32T)

Marketable securities (bills, notes, bonds, TIPS, FRNs) are auctioned to the public and can then be freely bought and sold on the open market at whatever price investors will pay — their value can rise or fall before maturity, and this is the debt held by the Fed, foreign investors, mutual funds, banks, pensions and individuals described in Section 2.

Non-marketable securities are issued directly to a specific holder, can't be resold to a third party, and (with the exception of savings bonds, which can be redeemed early with a small penalty) are generally cashed in only with Treasury itself, at face value plus accrued interest — they carry no market price risk. Non-marketable debt breaks into four pieces:

Non-Marketable Securities by Type

Government Account Series (GAS) — special-issue securities Treasury credits to its own trust funds (Social Security's OASI/DI, Medicare's HI/SMI, federal employee retirement, and dozens more) as they take in more in dedicated taxes/premiums than they pay out. This is the "intragovernmental" debt from Section 1 — the government owes it to itself.$8.07T
U.S. Savings Bonds (Series EE/I) — the paper-and-electronic bonds sold to individual savers, redeemable at TreasuryDirect.gov.$147B
State and Local Government Series (SLGS) — securities state/local governments buy to temporarily park proceeds from their own tax-exempt bond issues, satisfying IRS arbitrage rules.$86B
Domestic Series & other — a small remainder, mostly securities issued to specific domestic institutions under older programs.$16B
06

Debt as a share of GDP

The debt-to-GDP ratio puts the debt's size in the context of the economy's ability to carry it. It last approached today's level in the years immediately after World War II, fell for the next six decades as the postwar economy outgrew wartime borrowing, then reversed sharply after the 2008 financial crisis and again in 2020.

Source: FRED, Gross Federal Debt as % of GDP, annual, 1939–2025 (earliest year with a consistent GDP-based series) · latest quarterly estimate (Q1–Q2 2026) computed the same way from Treasury debt ÷ BEA GDP

Total public debt, percent of GDP

Annual, 1939–2025

Source: FRED, Gross Federal Debt as Percent of GDP (GFDGDPA188S) ↗

Where it stands

121.5%
2025, latest full year (FRED)
~121–123%
Q1–Q2 2026, latest quarterly estimate
119.1%
1946, prior all-time peak
Debt-to-GDP peaked at 119.1% in 1946, paying for World War II, then fell almost every year through the 1970s as the economy grew faster than the debt. It did not return to a comparable level until 2020 (125.9%), and has stayed above the old 1946 watermark ever since.
For scale: the ratio spent nearly all of 1960–2007 in a 30%–65% range. It has not been below 100% since 2012.

CBO's 10-year debt projection

Debt held by the public, % of GDP — CBO's own headline metric, which excludes intragovernmental holdings and so reads lower than the gross-debt chart above

Source: Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036 ↗ (February 2026 baseline)

CBO projects debt held by the public will exceed its post-WWII record (106% of GDP, 1946) around 2027–2028, reach 108% by 2030, and hit 120% by 2036 — a level never before seen in U.S. history, driven mainly by growing Social Security and Medicare costs and compounding interest, not by any new emergency spending.

CBO's economic assumptions behind the baseline

Where things stand right now vs. what CBO's February 2026 baseline assumes for FY2026–2036

IndicatorMost recent actualCBO, 2026CBO, 10-yr avg
Real GDP growth1.5% (Q2 '26)2.2%1.8%
CPI inflation, y/y3.3% (Jul '26)2.9%2.3%
10-yr Treasury yield4.80% (Sep '26)4.1%4.4%
Unemployment rate4.1% (Aug '26)—4.3%
≈$31.8T
Nominal GDP, 2026 (implied)
≈$46.7T
Nominal GDP, 2036 (implied)
17.7%
Revenue, 10-yr avg (% of GDP)
3.3%→4.6%
Net interest, 2026→2036 (% of GDP)
The gap between "most recent actual" and CBO's 2026 forecast is normal — CBO published this baseline in February 2026, so a few months of incoming data (softer growth, hotter inflation, higher long rates) can already sit above or below what it assumed. Nominal GDP figures are back-calculated from CBO's own spending-to-GDP ratios ($7.4T spending ÷ 23.3% in 2026; $11.4T ÷ 24.4% in 2036) since CBO's summary reports GDP shares rather than dollar levels directly. By CBO's math, 66 cents of every dollar the government borrows over the next decade goes just to pay interest on the debt.

CBO's projections: revenue and outlays by category

Percent of GDP, CBO baseline vs. long-term outlook

Source: Congressional Budget Office, Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036 ↗ (Feb 2026) and Long-Term Budget Outlook: 2025 to 2055 ↗ (Mar 2025)

CBO's standard 10-year baseline runs only through 2036, and does not itemize every category for every year; its separate long-term outlook uses coarser categories and was last updated a year earlier, on somewhat different assumptions. 2025 and the totals for 2035 are CBO's own published figures. Every other cell — 2030, 2040, and the category split within 2030/2035/2040 — is our smooth interpolation between CBO's nearest published data points (mainly its 2025/2026, 2035, 2036, 2045 and 2055 figures), not an official CBO number for that exact year. Treat those cells as directional, not precise.
07

Federal revenues by category

Individual income taxes and payroll (social insurance) taxes together supply roughly seven of every eight federal revenue dollars. Corporate income tax is a distant third.

Source: Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement, Table 4 · FY2025 = full fiscal year (Oct '24–Sep '25); FY2026 YTD = Oct '25–Jul '26 (10 months) vs. the same 10 months a year earlier

Federal Revenues: FY2025 full-year receipts

$5.235T total, by source

Source: Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement, Table 4 ↗

Federal Revenues: FY2026 vs. FY2025, year-to-date

Oct–Jul (10 months), $ billions

Source: Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement, Table 4 ↗

Year-to-date receipts are up $139B (3.2%) versus the same 10 months of FY2025, led by individual income and payroll taxes; corporate receipts are down $94B, partly a timing effect from estimated-payment schedules.

Import tariffs (customs duties), 1935–2025

Annual, $ billions — customs duties were a minor, fairly flat revenue source for nine decades until 2025

Source: BEA National Income and Product Accounts via FRED, Customs Duties (B235RC1A027NBEA) ↗

Customs duties sat under $40B a year for decades, then stepped up with the first Trump administration's Section 301/232 tariffs on China, steel and aluminum starting 2018 ($38.5B → $77.8B by 2019). They jumped again — far more sharply — after the second Trump administration announced broad new "reciprocal" tariffs on April 2, 2025 ("Liberation Day," a 10% universal tariff effective Apr 5 plus higher country-specific rates), pushing full-year 2025 customs receipts to $265.1B, more than triple any prior year. Treasury's FY2026 year-to-date customs collections (Oct '25–Jul '26, per the Monthly Treasury Statement) are already $154.5B for just 10 months.
View full data table
08

Federal outlays by category

Treasury's Monthly Treasury Statement reports spending by department and agency rather than by "budget function," so the categories below are the actual Treasury-published totals for the largest spending agencies, with everything else grouped as "all other."

Source: Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement, Table 5 · FY2025 = full fiscal year; FY2026 YTD = Oct '25–Jul '26 (10 months) vs. the same period a year earlier

Federal Outlays: FY2025 full-year outlays

$7.010T total, by department

Source: Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement, Table 5 ↗

Federal Outlays: FY2026 vs. FY2025, year-to-date

Oct–Jul (10 months), $ billions

Source: Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement, Table 5 ↗

The Treasury total above is mostly net interest on the debt — $1.170T of its $1.407T FY2026 year-to-date figure (see Section 4) — with the remainder chiefly IRS-administered refundable tax credits. Social Security and Health & Human Services (which includes Medicare and Medicaid) together are now roughly half of all federal outlays.
View full data table
Part II · Monetary policy

Everything above is fiscal policy — taxing, borrowing and spending decisions made by Congress and Treasury. The Federal Reserve is separate: it sets short-term interest rates and controls its own balance sheet, and in doing so it directly shapes what the debt above costs to carry (Section 4) — while also being, via its own securities holdings, one of that debt's largest single holders (Section 2).

09

The Fed's balance sheet vs. the money supply

Since 2008 the Fed has used its balance sheet — not just interest rates — as a policy tool: buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities outright ("quantitative easing") to push money into the economy, then shrinking those holdings ("quantitative tightening") to pull it back. M2 — cash, checking and savings deposits, and money-market funds — is the broadest simple gauge of that money in the hands of households and businesses.

Source: Federal Reserve Board H.4.1 release via FRED, series WALCL, TREAST, WSHOMCB, and M2SL · balance sheet as of Sep 2, 2026 (weekly); M2 as of Jul 2026 (monthly, ~6-week lag)

Total Fed assets vs. M2 money stock

$ trillions, selected dates, 2003–2026 — M2 on the left axis, Fed total assets on the right (shown separately: the two series differ enough in scale that one shared axis would flatten the smaller one)

Source: FRED, WALCL ↗ (Fed total assets) and M2SL ↗ (M2 money stock)

Three balance-sheet eras

$6.74T
Total Fed assets, Sep 2, 2026
$23.22T
M2 money stock, Jul 2026
~$0.9T
Fed assets, end of 2007 (pre-crisis)
2008–2015 (QE1–QE3): <$1T → $4.5T, buying Treasuries and MBS after rates hit zero.
2020 (pandemic QE): $4.17T → $8.94T peak, Apr 2022 — nearly 10× the 2007 level.
2022–today (QT): ~$2.2T rolled off, down to $6.74T, while M2 kept growing.

Composition of Fed assets over time

Treasuries vs. MBS vs. other (repos, loans, gold), $ trillions

Source: FRED, TREAST ↗ and WSHOMCB ↗

The balance sheet today

Simplified T-account, Sep 2, 2026, $ billions

What is SOMA? The System Open Market Account — the Fed's own securities portfolio, built by buying Treasuries and MBS outright. It's what "the Fed's balance sheet" mostly means; QE grows it, QT shrinks it.
What MBS does it hold? Agency mortgage-backed securities — bonds backed by home loans and guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, not private-label mortgage debt. At $1.91T, this is the legacy of 2008–2014 and 2020–2021 purchases meant to hold down mortgage rates directly.
Reserve balances — the deposits banks hold at the Fed, and the flip side of QE/QT — are the largest liability at $2.89T, roughly double their pre-pandemic (2019) level even after two years of runoff.
Other tools? SOMA purchases and short-term rates aren't the Fed's only levers — ON RRP, the Standing Repo Facility, the discount window and reserve requirements are covered in Section 11.

Source: Federal Reserve, H.4.1, Factors Affecting Reserve Balances ↗

10

Policy interest rates

The Fed's main lever is the federal funds rate — the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans of reserves — which it steers using a corridor of administered rates rather than by trading in the market directly.

Source: Federal Reserve Board via FRED, series FEDFUNDS, IORB, DPCREDIT, RRPONTSYAWARD · rates as of Sep 9–10, 2026

Effective federal funds rate

Monthly average, percent, 2000–2026

Source: Federal Reserve Board via FRED, FEDFUNDS ↗

Today's rate corridor

Where each administered rate sits, percent

The FOMC sets a target range (currently 3.50%–3.75%) and defends it with two administered rates: interest on reserve balances (IORB) discourages banks from lending below it, and the overnight reverse repo (ON RRP) rate gives money-market funds a Fed-guaranteed floor. The discount rate caps the range from above as a backstop borrowing cost.

Source: FRED, IORB ↗, DPCREDIT ↗, RRPONTSYAWARD ↗, DFEDTARU/L ↗

What markets expect next

Odds of each target-range outcome at the next four FOMC meetings, implied by fed funds futures prices — the same methodology behind the CME FedWatch Tool

Source: CME Group FedWatch methodology (fed funds futures); figures as reported by Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor, investing.com/central-banks/fed-rate-monitor ↗, snapshot taken Sep 10, 2026 — CME's own tool updates live intraday and is not directly embeddable here; check it directly for the current reading

Markets currently lean toward a 25-basis-point hike at the Sept 16 meeting — a 69.6% probability of moving to 3.75–4.00%, vs. 30.4% for holding at 3.50–3.75% — with the odds of still-higher rates building at each meeting after that, reaching a 45% chance of 4.00–4.25% by December. That's a shift in market expectations, not a Fed announcement — it will keep moving as new data (like the CPI print in Section 4's implied backdrop) comes in before each meeting.
11

Monetary policy instruments

The Fed no longer moves rates by buying and selling small amounts of securities day to day. In the current "ample reserves" regime it instead uses a set of standing facilities — summarized here — to hold short-term rates inside its target range and to backstop the plumbing of the financial system.

Source: Federal Reserve Board, New York Fed Markets Desk, and FRED (see cards for specific series)

Federal funds target range

Since 1994 (formal target)

The FOMC's headline tool: a 25-basis-point target range for the overnight rate banks charge each other for reserves, reset at each of its eight scheduled meetings a year.

3.50–3.75%current target range

Interest on Reserve Balances (IORB)

Since Oct 2008

The rate the Fed pays banks on reserves parked at the Fed. Since reserves became abundant post-2008, IORB — not open-market trading — has done most of the work of keeping the effective rate inside the target range.

3.65%current IORB rate

Overnight Reverse Repo (ON RRP)

Since Sept 2013

Lets money-market funds and other non-banks lend cash to the Fed overnight against Treasury collateral, setting a floor under short-term rates. Usage exploded as reserves and money-fund cash surged, then collapsed as the Fed shrank its balance sheet and Treasury bill supply absorbed that cash.

$0.4Boutstanding, Sep 9, 2026 (vs. $2.55T peak, Dec 2022)

Source: FRED, RRPONTSYD ↗

Standing Repo Facility (SRF)

Since Jul 2021

The mirror image of ON RRP: primary dealers and banks can borrow cash from the Fed overnight against Treasury, agency and MBS collateral at a fixed rate, capping how high repo-market rates can spike. Created after money-market rates briefly spiked to 10% in September 2019.

Set by FOMCminimum bid rate held near the top of the target range; usage is normally near zero, spiking only on stress days

Discount Window (Primary Credit)

Since 1913 (current form 2003)

The Fed's original lender-of-last-resort tool: banks can borrow directly from their regional Reserve Bank against a broad range of collateral. Priced above the target range as a deliberate backstop, so it is used sparingly and mostly carries stigma among banks.

3.75%current primary credit rate

Large-Scale Asset Purchases (QE/QT)

Since Nov 2008

Outright buying (QE) or letting mature without reinvestment (QT) of Treasuries and agency MBS — the tool covered in Section 9. It works on longer-term rates and financial conditions more broadly, complementing the short-term rate corridor above.

−$2.20Tbalance-sheet runoff since Apr 2022 peak

Reserve Requirements

Reduced to 0% Mar 2020

Historically, the minimum reserves banks had to hold against deposits — once a core policy lever. The Fed cut all reserve requirement ratios to zero at the start of the pandemic and has not reinstated them, leaving IORB and the facilities above to do this work instead.

0%reserve requirement ratio, all deposit classes