Daily Brief: Debt at $40.3 trillion on October 13 after a $42.4 billion rise, as deposits topped withdrawals

The debt number

The total public debt outstanding on October 13 was $40,343,879,238,035.67. The comparison point in the Treasury series is October 9, the prior reporting day, when the total was $40,301,480,531,899.65. The increase across that span was $42,398,706,136. Daily moves in this series are uneven, because redemptions of maturing securities and new issues do not fall on the same days.

The longer trend is steadier. Over the 64 days from August 10 to October 13, the debt grew by $452,105,244,014. That is an average pace of about $7,064,144,438 per day, or about $81,761 per second. At that average pace, debt per resident rises by about $20.60 per day. The debt closed fiscal 2026 on September 30 at $40,171,825,101,340.31, so the total now stands $172,054,136,695 above the fiscal year close, thirteen days into fiscal 2027. Debt per resident is a measure of scale only. It divides the total debt by the resident population so the size of the total can be compared across years.

The daily cash picture

The Daily Treasury Statement for October 13 recorded $353,928,000,000 in deposits and $306,239,000,000 in withdrawals. Deposits are the cash coming into the Treasury General Account, mainly tax receipts and proceeds from selling Treasury securities. Withdrawals are the cash going out, mainly benefit payments, payroll, interest, and payments to contractors and states. On October 13, deposits exceeded withdrawals by $47,689,000,000.

A single day with deposits ahead of withdrawals does not reduce the debt total on its own. The debt total counts Treasury securities outstanding, and it changes when securities are issued or redeemed, which follows the auction and maturity calendar rather than the daily cash balance. The cash statement and the debt statement answer two different questions: how much cash moved today, and how much the government has borrowed in total.

Data vintage: Treasury Debt to the Penny and Daily Treasury Statement figures dated October 13, 2026, pulled October 15, 2026. The Ledger snapshot for this date reports deposit and withdrawal totals only, so no line by line breakdown of the largest deposit and withdrawal categories is published with this brief.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Fiscal Data, Debt to the Penny dataset: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/debt-to-the-penny

2. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Fiscal Data, Daily Treasury Statement dataset: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/daily-treasury-statement/daily-treasury-statement