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Below are links to the Treasury Department's pages dealing with the National Debt. You may want to bookmark these links or download the entire page. They will allow you to separate truth from hoax and ignorance put forth largely by an uninformed media. These sites are just about all you need in order to follow the National Debt and know the truth---right from the horse's mouth.
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Bureau of Public Debt page. Daily updates of the current amount of debt held by the public. Postings usually take one day or so to accumulate. Provides totals for previous days of the month, prior months, and a ten year history of prior yearly totals. This is where you can get the National Debt increase year by year. |
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Interest on the Public Debt |
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Bureau of Public Debt page. Gives monthly interest on the National Debt and yearly totals for a ten year period. This page does not, however, separate the amount of cash paid by Congress out of the yearly budget separate from the amount issued to trusts/entitlements. For instance, total interest paid for fiscal 1997 was $356 billion. $244 billion came from '97 budget monies, and $112 billion was in the form of new Treasury bonds issued to the trusts. |
Who Holds The Debt |
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Another Bureau of Public Debt Page. This one gives you much the same as "Debt to the penny" but it breaks out Investor (Public) Debt from Entitlements (Intragovernmental Holdings) daily, monthly, and yearly totals. For increases, just subtract the time you are interested in from the current total. |
Daily Treasury Statement |
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On page 2 of the PDF version, Table III-C "Debt Subject to Limit" will give you the current standing adjusted for the amount that the government does not deem subject to the debt limit. Table IV "Federal Tax Deposits" on the same page, will give you the day's tax receipts, monthly to date and yearly to date. Unfortunately, it does not break out individual, corporate, and payroll taxes which you will have to find elsewhere. |
| Monthly Treasury Statement |
The Treasury issues this on the 14th working day of every month. It covers many things, including entitlement trust fund increases or withdrawals in Table 8, PDF format. The way I get there is to click on the PDF bar that takes you to the very end of the report, and then I back up two pages. |
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| Summary Statement of the Public Debt | Comparison of current and previous year in terms of monthly totals of marketable and nonmarketable Treasury securities. Remember, the nonmarketable securities chiefly represent the portion of the debt held by Trust Funds; i.e., the "Government Account Series." This page is often two or three months behind current levels.
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| Finding Trust Fund holdings | You have to dig at this link. These are the Quarterly Treasury Bulletins and the trust funds are covered inside and during different quarters. They are also covered in annual reports posted 6 months after the close of the fiscal year if you want to wait. Each Quarterly Report is in ASCI or PDF format. The PDF is best. If you do not have this Adobe reader, you can download it free from this site. |
With any of these reports, you should feel free to browse around and get into whatever interests you.
When dealing with the National Debt, remember that totals include the annual interest that is factored in continuously with a five year formula on long term bonds that the Treasury uses. Do not think, as so many media people do that something like the total of the Social Security trust funds are all surplus when a good portion is interest paid by simply handing the trust more bogus markers.
You might also enjoy a short sweet statement about the Bureau of Public Debt by its Commissioner.