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How Much Money Do You Owe?

• answer: If you live in the United States, you owe at least $46,019.  If you live with one other person, your household owes at least $92,038.  If you live in a household of four, your household owes at least $184,076.
• According to the Department of the Treasury, the outstanding debt of the U.S. on July 27, 2011 was $14,342,819,149,604.76 (fourteen trillion, three hundred forty two billion, eight hundred nineteen million, one hundred forty nine thousand, six hundred four dollars and seventy six cents).  According to the Bureau of the Census' population clock, the population of the U.S. on June 30, 2011 was approximately 311,669,450.  Dividing the total debt by the population gives us the amount owed by each resident (children, infants and non-citizens included).
• For those who are interested, the Treasury also presents a page showing the portion of the debt owned by Government Trust funds such as Social Security versus that owned by other individuals, businesses, and groups.  For a more detailed breakdown, I took the numbers from the June 2011 Treasury Bulletin and prepared this table and chart. The current issue of the Treasury Bulletin is available at http://www.fms.treas.gov/bulletin/index.html
• If your state and/or locality has incurred bonded indebtedness, you'd need to calculate your individual portion of that debt too, then add it to your portion of the national debt as calculated above.  To this total, you'd then add any personal debt you have.
• If you want to see an up-to-the-second calculation of the estimated federal debt, look at http://www.uwsa.com/us-national-debt.html or http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ ; and, for those who love flashing numbers, there is the U.S. National Debt Clock (http://www.usdebtclock.org/).
• If you (or your students) are wondering whether or not debt (especially national debt) is something about which to be concerned, read this article by Robert Freeman on the options facing us when the debt finally comes due.
• If your students argue that they don't really have to pay this debt because they are not taxpayers, remind them that they do so each and every time they make a purchase.   People from whom they buy do owe taxes.  Part of their purchase price goes to pay those taxes. And part of those taxes goes to pay interest on the debt (now over $400 billion per fiscal year).
• Looking at the history of the debt, I see that we haven't reduced it in any fiscal year since FY1960.  In fact, we've added to it every year.  The rate of increase in the debt did decrease markedly during the Clinton administration, but has been rising steadily since he left office.  During the first Bush administration (1989-92), the debt increased at an average of 11.8% per fiscal year.  During the 8 years of the Clinton administration, it rose at an average of 4.29% per fiscal year (dropping steadily from 8.53% in his first year to 0.32% in his final year).  This trend reversed immediately upon the change of administrations in 2001.  During the eight years of the 2nd Bush administration, the debt rose by just under $4.9 trillion (more debt than was accumulated in the 204 years from the inauguration of George Washington in 1789 through the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993). The debt is now 85.53% larger than it was when this administration took office in 2001.  Mr. Bush repeatedly promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of FY2009.  However this promise was not what it seemed to be.  Read Joel Havemann's Bush's Deficit Plan Is All in the Math, published on February 7, 2005 in the Los Angeles Times, to find out more.  You must also remember that the deficit and the debt are two different things; even if the deficit is cut, the debt will rise.  To find out why the deficit may actually be much worse than the administration reports, read Representative Jim Cooper's Forward to the Financial Report of the United States 2005. You can find the Treasury's entire 2005 Financial Report of the United States by clicking here. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation (Pete Peterson was Treasury Secretary during the Ford Administration) published a detailed guide to The State of the Nation's Finances. It too is worth your reading time.

  One way the Bush administration made the projected deficit appear smaller is to exclude the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from their proposed budgets. The estimates for the up-to-the-second costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan below are calculated from a formula provided by Costofwar.com.  Compare the Iraq cost to the cost estimates made by the Bush administration as it was attempting to sell the public on the value of going to war in 2002 and early 2003 (they seemed to promise it would cost a maximum of $60 billion).  (This NPR report is also on point.)

  Below is a JPG image that illustrates the above history.  You may click on it to open a larger version, suitable for printing, in a standalone browser window.  Should you do so, be sure to close the window without exiting your browser program once you are finished with it.  If you choose to print the image, be sure to specify landscape rather than portrait paper orientation in your browser's Page Setup area.  If you have the Acrobat Reader installed for your browser, click here to open a window containing a PDF version of the table below (from there you will be able to get the sharpest possible print).

  

There are many purposes to which a table like this can be put.  Depending upon your students' abilities and needs, you might want to have them work (individually or in small groups) on questions like:

1. What was the Federal Debt at the end of the fiscal year during George Herbert Walker Bush's first year in office?
2. At the end of what fiscal year shown on the table was the change in the debt the smallest?  At the end of what fiscal year was it the largest?
3. What were the last names of the presidents who served during the period 1977-2008, and how many years did each hold office?
4. Under which president named in the table was the most debt accumulated?  Under which did the greatest percentage increase occur?
5. Under which president named in the table was the least debt accumulated?  Under which did the smallest percentage increase occur?
6. What formula would one use to calculate the change in the debt for a given row?
7. What formula would one use to calculate the % change for a given period of time?
8. On average, how much did the debt grow each day from October 1, 2007 through January 20, 2009?
9. Using the daily growth number you calculated in #8 above, how much will the debt grow during the time you are in class today?
10. How much will it grow during the time it takes you to read this sentence?

If they are familiar with this sort of data and calculations, you might want to assign each a president with whom to work, then have them use the Treasury's web site to research and complete a debt table (like that above) for the years during which their assigned president served.

If your students are unfamiliar with large numbers, you could begin by pulling numbers from the table, and showing them how to read them in English.  For example, $2,602,337,712,041.16 is read as two trillion, six hundred two billion, three hundred thirty seven million, seven hundred twelve thousand, forty one dollars and sixteen cents.

Related Classroomtools.com activities

• If you're looking for a way to help your students better comprehend the magnitude of numbers the size of those discussed on this page, see How Big Is A Billion?.
• For a way to show them how US federal budget numbers can be used propagandistically, see Numbers at War.

Notes

NOTE (January 28, 2010) The Senate passed a bill previously passed by the House of Representatives to raise the ceiling on the national debt to $14.294 trillion. However, since the Senate increased the debt ceiling in the bill from the $13.029 trillion passed by the House, the bill was sent back to the House for reconsideration. On February 4, 2010, the House passed the bill as approved by Senate, and the bill was then sent to the President for his signature. President Obama signed the bill into law on Friday, February 12, 2010.

NOTE (December 24, 2009) The Senate passed a bill previously passed by the House of Representatives to raise the ceiling on the national debt to $12.394 trillion. The bill was signed into law on Dec. 28 by President Obama. It should allow the federal government to continue operations through mid-February 2010. A bill expanding the debt ceiling further is scheduled for congressional action in mid-January 2010.

NOTE (March 28, 2009) A good summary of the Federal Debt, its various components, and its history is available at the Wikipedia page on the United States Public Debt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

NOTE (October 1, 2008): For the first time in history, the U.S. Federal Debt surpassed $10 trillion. While most news outlets were reporting the efforts of the administration to have Congress enact the $700 billion "bailout"/rescue bill, nobody seemed to be reporting the actual borrowing taking place. The Treasury Department's Debt to the Penny web site showed that from September 19 through September 30, 2008 (just over 1 week), the United States borrowed slightly more than $360 billion - the fastest pace at which money has been borrowed in U.S. history. Borrowing at this rate would soon reach the debt ceiling enacted at the end of July, so the "bailout" bill includes a provision to increase the debt ceiling to $11.315 trillion.

NOTE (July 30, 2008): President Bush signed the bill raising the ceiling on the national debt to $10.6 trillion. Domestic news reports of this signing are difficult to find, but the International Herald Tribune reported it in an item located on the web at http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=14887401.

NOTE (September 29, 2007): President Bush signed the bill raising the ceiling on the national debt to $9.815 trillion. I have been unable to find a news reports of this event, however the legislative history of this bill, showing the date of the President's signature can be read at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HJ00043:@@@L&summ2=m& I also found a news release on the White House web site. Among other things, it notes the signing of the bill to increase the debt limit, but provides no numbers, details or bill signing photos. You may view it at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/09/20070929-5.html

NOTE (March 21, 2006): According to the Associated Press, "With no fanfare, President Bush signed a bill Monday pushing the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion." The actual cap is $8.965 trillion. The NPR report on the bill is at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5282521 The legislative history of this bill, passed by the House in May 2005 and the Senate on March 16, 2006, can be read at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:h.j.res.00047:

NOTE (January 31, 2006): According to Treasury Secretary John Snow in a letter to Congress dated December 29, 2005, the Federal Debt will hit the $8.184 trillion limit (signed into law on Friday, November 19, 2004) sometime in mid-February 2006.  If the limit is not raised by then, he will be able to delay a default for approximately one month. In fact, the limit appears to have been hit during the last week in January 2006.

NOTE (November 26, 2004): On Thursday, November 18, 2004, with the government facing default, Congress passed legislation raising the debt ceiling to $8.184 trillion.  President Bush quietly signed the bill into law on Friday, November 19, 2004.  According to the Treasury's Debt to the Penny web page, the total debt immediately jumped $53 billion.  The following Tuesday (November 23, 2004) it jumped another $21 billion to $7.519 trillion.

NOTE (August 17, 2004): The Federal Debt is fast approaching the ceiling of $7.384 trillion signed into law on May 27, 2003.  At the close of business yesterday, August 16, 2004, it totaled $7,335,563,157,880.75.  This is just $48 billion beneath the ceiling.  The average monthly increase so far this fiscal year has been $52 billion.  Therefore, unless Congress raises the ceiling quite soon, the US will almost certainly hit it before the end of the FY2004, and the games described in the note above will begin anew.  Treasury Secretary John Snow wrote to Congress that the government would hit the ceiling in late September or early October, and could avoid a default until mid to late November.

NOTE: The US government reached the statutory debt ceiling (6.4 trillion dollars) at the beginning of 2003.  The Republican Congress, worrying about the political impact of raising the debt ceiling again so soon after raising it in the summer of 2002, has been reluctant to increase it.  To avoid defaulting on the debt, an almost unthinkable occurrence, the Treasury began engaging in various accounting tricks (most probably delaying required payments to government trust funds) thereby allowing it to avoid new borrowing that would breach the ceiling.  On May 12, 2003, the Associated Press reported that the Republicans passed a nearly $1 trillion debt ceiling increase in the House, and were trying to get it past the Senate.  On May 19, the Washington Post reported that the Treasury Department had told Congress that it would run out of maneuvering room on May 28; and that if a debt increase was not passed by then the following items would be threatened: (1) $21 billion in individual and business income tax refunds, (2) $40 billion in monthly payments to Social Security recipients, and (3) $12 billion in payments to defense contractors.  On Tuesday, May 27, without the fanfare that usually surrounds a bill signing, George W. Bush signed into law a bill that increased the national debt ceiling to just under $7.4 trillion.  On June 16, 2003, the Guardian reported that a Treasury Department spokesman reported the US could hit the new debt ceiling as early as April 2004.  On June 28, 2003, the Washington Post reported on an interview with a Treasury Department official who suggested that the country would be better off with no debt ceiling.
 

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original web posting: Thursday, December 10, 1998
last modified: Friday, February 10, 2012