The national debt

Clinton took office with deficits near $300 billion a year and made deficit reduction the centerpiece of his first budget, raising top tax rates in 1993 over unanimous Republican opposition. A long expansion followed — the dot-com boom, low unemployment and surging capital-gains revenue — and a 1997 balanced-budget deal with the Republican Congress locked in spending restraint. By fiscal 1998 the government was running its first surplus since 1969, and it posted surpluses in each of his last four years. The debt still rose over the eight years, because interest and off-budget borrowing continued, but at the slowest pace of any modern presidency.

Debt on Jan. 1, 1993: $4.231 trillion (nearest quarter-end); on Jan. 22, 2001: $5.728 trillion. Source: U.S. Treasury.

Bush inherited a surplus and a recession that began in March 2001. Two rounds of tax cuts, the response to the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq turned surpluses into deficits, and a new Medicare prescription-drug benefit added a large permanent commitment. Growth in the mid-2000s narrowed the gap, but the housing collapse and the 2008 financial crisis ended the decade in emergency: the $700 billion bank rescue and a sharp drop in tax revenue sent borrowing surging in his final months. The debt roughly doubled on his watch.

Debt on Jan. 22, 2001: $5.728 trillion; on Jan. 20, 2009: $10.627 trillion. Source: U.S. Treasury.

Obama took office in the worst downturn since the Depression, with the economy shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. The $787 billion stimulus, expanded unemployment aid and collapsing revenue produced deficits above $1 trillion in each of his first four years. A 2011 standoff over the debt ceiling led to the sequester spending caps, and deficits fell by more than half as the recovery took hold. Low interest rates kept the cost of the larger debt manageable, but the total nearly doubled again.

Debt on Jan. 20, 2009: $10.627 trillion; on Jan. 20, 2017: $19.947 trillion. Source: U.S. Treasury.

Trump's first term began with steady growth and low unemployment, yet deficits widened anyway: the 2017 tax law cut corporate and individual rates, and bipartisan budget deals raised spending caps for defense and domestic programs. Deficits approached $1 trillion a year before the pandemic. Then COVID-19 shut down much of the economy in 2020, and Congress passed roughly $3 trillion in relief — direct payments, expanded unemployment benefits and business loans — the largest peacetime borrowing in American history. Most of the term's increase came in its final year.

Debt on Jan. 20, 2017: $19.947 trillion; on Jan. 20, 2021: $27.752 trillion. Source: U.S. Treasury.

Biden took office with the pandemic still weighing on the economy and added a $1.9 trillion relief package in his first months, followed by infrastructure, semiconductor and climate laws that spend over several years. Inflation reached a 40-year high in 2022, and the Federal Reserve's response raised the interest rate on new government borrowing sharply — annual interest costs on the debt passed $1 trillion by 2024. A 2023 debt-ceiling deal imposed modest spending caps. Unemployment stayed low and growth held up, but borrowing continued at close to $2 trillion a year.

Debt on Jan. 20, 2021: $27.752 trillion; on Jan. 21, 2025: $36.218 trillion. Source: U.S. Treasury.

Trump returned to office with the debt above $36 trillion and interest now among the largest items in the federal budget. His second term has paired sweeping tariffs, which bring in revenue, with a 2025 law extending the 2017 tax cuts and adding new breaks, which the Congressional Budget Office estimated would add trillions to deficits over the decade. Spending cuts pursued through the executive branch have been small relative to the whole budget, and deficits have stayed near $2 trillion a year. The figures here update as Treasury reports them, so this entry is a running tally rather than a final one.

Debt on Jan. 21, 2025: $36.218 trillion; on Oct. 8, 2026: $40.305 trillion. Source: U.S. Treasury.