Honest projection · estimated
US National Debt
The total public debt of the United States, taken from the Treasury’s own daily “Debt to the Penny” record — not a guessed clock. We show the real figure and the date it was published, and let it drift only gently between the Treasury’s business-day updates. The everyday change is noisy and sometimes falls; a smooth always-rising tick would be fiction.
About this number
This is an honest projection, not a census. It is computed by carrying a published figure forward at a known rate over real elapsed time — ≈ anchored to the daily Treasury figure, from US Treasury “Debt to the Penny” — total public debt outstanding, updated each business day; ticked modestly between updates at the recent average drift. The source is US Treasury — Debt to the Penny (FiscalData). The true value is known only to within a margin; this is the running estimate, and we label it as one.