Every year the government spends more than it takes in. This gap is called the deficit which has to be covered. So the Treasury borrows by selling bonds to Americans, pension funds, banks, foreign governments.

That is the whole mechanism. The debt is every year's gap, stacked up. Since 1970 there have been four years without one.

The bonds come due, and the money to pay them back is not there either. So the Treasury sells new bonds to cover the old ones. The balance does not go down. It gets refinanced.

Interest is part of what the government spends. So part of every year's gap is interest on the gaps before it.

For a long time that refinancing was cheap. Interest rates went up in 2022, and every bond that comes due now gets replaced at the new rate.

Source on the count of deficit years: Congressional Budget Office, Historical Budget Data.

→See the plan

↓ Learn More

1. Ourselves.

The largest holder of American government debt is Americans, and most of it is retirement money.

Here is how that works. When the government spends more than it takes in, the Treasury covers the gap by selling a bond, which is a loan with a fixed term and a fixed rate. Whoever buys it has lent the government money and gets paid back on a set date, with interest. The gap is why we borrow. The bonds are how. So the question of who we owe it to is really the question of who bought them.

About $8 trillion is owed to Social Security, Medicare, and federal retirement funds. For years those programs took in more than they paid out, and the surplus was lent to the Treasury.

2. Institutions holding money on behalf of Americans.

Pension funds buy Treasury bonds because they have to pay retirees decades from now and need something safe. Insurance companies do the same. Retirement accounts hold them inside the funds people choose. Banks hold them, state governments hold them, and some people buy savings bonds directly.

Most people who own some have no idea they do.

3. About a third is held in other countries, in the same bonds.

Japan holds about $1.2 trillion.

The United Kingdom about $860 billion.

China about $680 billion. (China holds less than it did a decade ago, not more.)

After that it falls off: Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands are each around $500 billion.

*Some of what is counted by country is money managed in financial centers, not held by governments.

Sources on foreign holdings: U.S. Treasury, Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities. On the $8 trillion owed to federal trust funds: U.S. Treasury, Monthly Statement of the Public Debt.

→See the plan

↓ Learn More

Nobody is proposing to pay off $40 trillion. That has never been the argument.

What matters is the debt measured against the size of the economy. A country that produces more can carry more, so the number economists and rating agencies actually watch is the debt as a share of what the country produces in a year.

From the mid-1950s until about 2008 it stayed under 50 percent. It has climbed almost every year since. It is about 100 percent now.

The only time it has been higher was right after the Second World War, at 106 percent. We have not passed that yet. On current projections we pass it within a few years and reach about 120 percent by 2036.

The goal is not zero. The goal is to get that share going down.

Sources on the historical share: Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Table 7.1. On the projection: Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook, 2026 to 2036.

→See the plan

↓ Learn More

Most of the suggested fixes go after a single category. Here is what each one does to the gap.

Foreign aid?

Everything the federal government spent on international affairs last year came to $45 billion. The yearly gap is about $1.9 trillion.

Waste and fraud?

Federal agencies made about $186 billion in improper payments last year. It is the largest of these by far, it is worth going after on its own terms, and it is about a tenth of the gap.

Taxing one group?

Add up every tax increase on high earners that could realistically be sustained and it comes to roughly $7 trillion over ten years. Deficits over those same ten years are projected at $24.4 trillion.

Growing out of it?

The economy is expected to keep growing. The debt is expected to grow faster. That is why the share keeps climbing, from about 100 percent of the economy now to about 120 percent by 2036.

Printing money?

The government can create dollars. It cannot create them without making every existing dollar worth less, which is a tax collected from everyone holding one.

The debt ceiling?

It has been raised or suspended every time it has been reached. It has never once reduced the debt.

No single category accounts for this. That is why every fix aimed at a single category comes up short.

Sources: on improper payments, U.S. Government Accountability Office, Payment Integrity, fiscal 2025. On foreign aid spending, U.S. Treasury, Combined Statement, FY2025. On the yearly gap and the ten-year deficit projection, Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook, 2026 to 2036. On sustainable revenue from high earners, Peterson Foundation, on analysis by Brian Riedl.

→See the plan

↓ Learn More

Everyone, but not in the same way and not at the same time.

The ones who inherit it. The Inheritors.

If you are in your twenties or thirties, you will spend your whole working life paying interest on money borrowed before you could vote. It arrives as higher taxes, fewer programs, or both, and it arrives during the years you earn the most.

The ones carrying both ends. The Providers.

If you are raising kids and helping your parents, you are exposed twice. The fund that pays your parents' Social Security runs short in late 2032. What your kids inherit is still growing. You are paying for both, and carrying a mortgage priced partly off what the government pays to borrow.

The ones who built it. The Elders.

If you are retired or close to it, Social Security has a dated problem rather than a vague one. The retirement trust fund runs short in the fourth quarter of 2032. After that it can pay about 78 percent of scheduled benefits, a cut of roughly 22 percent, unless Congress acts first. You paid in for forty years to build it.

The ones who did well. The Vanguard.

If you have done well, the tailwind was real. Some of that growth was paid for with borrowing that has not been settled.

Source on the 2032 date and the 78 percent: Social Security Board of Trustees, 2026 Annual Report, released June 9, 2026.

→See the plan

↓ Sources

None of this is a prediction. Every number on this page is arithmetic, and arithmetic can be changed. It only looks inevitable because nobody has been made to change it.

That is the part people get wrong about this problem. It is not that the math is unsolvable. It is that nobody has had to solve it, because there has never been a cost to not solving it.

The country has done harder things than this. It has balanced budgets before, four times since 1970, and it has done it under both parties. What it has not done is keep going once the pressure came off.

This is also not an argument between two sides. Both parties built this, over fifty years, and neither one can fix it alone. Anyone who tells you the other side did this is selling you something, and anyone who tells you their side can undo it is selling you the same thing.

The first sentence of the Constitution says the country was established for ourselves and our posterity. Posterity means the people who come after. It is in the founding sentence because the country was built for people who did not exist yet.

What we are asking for is not agreement about taxes, or spending, or any of the things people already fight about. It is a decision that this gets fixed, made by enough people that it stops being optional.

There is a plan for that. It is specific, it has been done before in this country, and it starts with one signature. Yours. You matter.

→See the plan

↓ Sources

Every figure on this page comes from the government's own records or from a nonpartisan analysis of them. Below is the specific document behind each one, which measure it uses, and where the measures differ.

The debt itself

U.S. Treasury, Historical Debt Outstanding. Total public debt outstanding at the close of each fiscal year, September 30. The ten fiscal year points on the first chart. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/historical-debt-outstanding/

U.S. Treasury, Debt to the Penny. The daily figure. The $40.05 trillion for August 18, 2026, is a single day rather than a fiscal year close, which is why it is labeled and drawn differently on the chart. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/

On measures. Section 1 uses the total debt, $40 trillion. Section 5 measures against the economy using the portion owed to outside lenders, which is about $8 trillion smaller, because the rest is money the government owes its own trust funds. Both numbers are correct and they are not the same number.

What interest costs

U.S. Treasury, Combined Statement of Receipts, Outlays, and Balances, FY2025, Outlays by Function. Every category in the ranked chart. https://fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/combined-statement/

U.S. Treasury, Monthly Treasury Statement. Net interest by fiscal year.

On measures. Three figures for interest are in common use and all three are real. Net interest, the line in the federal budget, was $970 billion in fiscal 2025. Interest on debt held by the public was about $1.0 trillion. Gross interest, which includes interest paid to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, was about $1.2 trillion. This page uses net interest in the chart so the categories add up to the federal budget, and says so on the chart.

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Schedules of Federal Debt, FY2025. The audited gross interest figure. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-26-107908.pdf

Deficits, projections and the economy

Congressional Budget Office, Historical Budget Data. Annual deficits and surpluses. The four surplus years since 1970 are fiscal 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001.

Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook, 2026 to 2036. Released February 2026. The $1.9 trillion deficit for fiscal 2026, the $24.4 trillion ten-year deficit total, debt at about 100 percent of the economy rising to about 120 percent by 2036, and net interest passing $1.0 trillion this year. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/62105

Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Table 7.1. Federal debt as a share of the economy, back to 1940. https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/budget/historical-tables/

Who holds it

U.S. Treasury, Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities. Country by country foreign holdings, updated monthly. https://ticdata.treasury.gov/

On what the country columns mean. A large share of what appears under the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands is money managed in financial centers located there. It is not held by those governments.

U.S. Treasury, Monthly Statement of the Public Debt. The split between debt held by the public and debt the government owes its own accounts.

Waste, taxes and the fixes that get proposed

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Payment Integrity: Agencies' Estimated Improper Payments Increased to $186 Billion in Fiscal Year 2025. Published April 27, 2026. Fifteen agencies, 64 programs. GAO notes the estimate does not cover every program, so the real figure is higher. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108694

Peterson Foundation, on analysis by Brian Riedl, Manhattan Institute. The ceiling on what tax increases on high earners could sustainably raise, roughly 2 percent of the economy, or about $7 trillion over a decade.

Social Security

Social Security Board of Trustees, 2026 Annual Report. Released June 9, 2026. The retirement trust fund, formally Old-Age and Survivors Insurance, is projected to deplete its reserves in the fourth quarter of 2032, with 78 percent of scheduled benefits payable after that. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/

On the two dates. You may see 2034 quoted instead. That is the retirement and disability funds combined, which would require Congress to change the law to merge them. Under current law they are separate, and the retirement fund's date is 2032.

International comparison

International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, April 2026. General government gross debt as a share of the economy, all countries.

On measures. The IMF figure includes state and local government debt, so it runs higher than the federal number used elsewhere on this page. The comparison here is about direction, not about rank.

→See the plan