How the Daily Treasury Statement works
The Daily Treasury Statement (DTS) is the federal government’s daily cash report, produced by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. It summarizes the cash moving through the Treasury General Account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, on a modified cash basis: deposits counted as received, withdrawals counted as processed. It publishes by 4 p.m. the next business day.
The lines readers care about live in Table II, Deposits and Withdrawals of Operating Cash, shown agency by agency with three columns: today, this month to date, and this fiscal year to date. The fiscal-year-to-date column is the meaningful one. Single days are noisy: benefit payment dates, tax deadlines, and debt auction settlements create spikes that mean little on their own.
What the DTS does not show: it is cash accounting, not budget accounting, so its totals do not match the Monthly Treasury Statement’s outlays. It lists agencies, not programs or people. And it never names end recipients. That is what this page adds, using agency reports, USAspending.gov, and the Federal Reserve.
Where the money went: the biggest withdrawal lines
Vintage: full fiscal year 2025, from the September 30, 2025 Daily Treasury Statement (the last day of FY2025). Figures in billions.
| DTS line | FY2025 | Who actually gets it |
|---|---|---|
| SSA – Benefits Payments | $1,398.6B | About 75 million beneficiaries: retirees, survivors, and disabled workers. Average retired worker’s check: $2,071/month, by direct deposit. |
| HHS – Medicare (Parts A, B, D) | $1,164.4B | About 68 million Medicare enrollees, reached through hospitals, doctors, Medicare Advantage insurers, and drug plans. |
| HHS – Grants to States for Medicaid | $666.4B | Federal matching funds to state Medicaid programs, which pay hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and insurers for about 68 million enrollees. |
| Interest on Treasury Securities | $609.2B | Whoever held Treasury securities on payday: bond funds, banks, pension funds, foreign governments (about 30% goes abroad), households, and the Fed. |
| DoD – misc | $474.7B | Operations, maintenance, weapons, and contracts. For the company-by-company detail, see USAspending.gov. |
| Taxes – Individual Tax Refunds (EFT) | $302.7B | Taxpayers who overpaid during the year, refunded electronically. |
| Federal Salaries (EFT) | $251.6B | The civilian federal workforce, paid electronically. |
| Dept of Education | $216.1B | Mostly student loan program costs and aid to schools and students. |
| VA – Benefits | $204.2B | Disability compensation, pensions, and related payments to veterans and their survivors. |
| USDA – Supp Nutrition Assist Prog (SNAP) | $106.1B | Benefits loaded onto EBT cards, spent at grocery retailers by participating households. |
| DoD – Military Active Duty Pay | $105.2B | Paychecks to active duty service members. |
| DoD – Military Retirement | $71.4B | Monthly retired pay to military retirees and survivor benefits to their families. |
Where the money came from: the biggest deposit lines
Vintage: full fiscal year 2025, September 30, 2025 DTS. Figures in billions.
| DTS line | FY2025 | Who pays it |
|---|---|---|
| Taxes – Withheld Individual/FICA | $3,414.4B | American workers and their employers: income tax plus Social Security and Medicare taxes withheld from every paycheck. |
| Non Withheld Individual/SECA | $1,153.0B | Self-employed workers, investors, and anyone whose withholding did not cover the bill: estimated payments and payments with returns. |
| Corporate income taxes | $460.3B | Corporations. |
| DHS – Customs and Certain Excise Taxes | $215.2B | Importers, when goods clear U.S. ports. |
| Miscellaneous excise taxes | $104.2B | Taxes on gasoline, diesel, airline tickets, tobacco, alcohol, and similar goods, borne by consumers and businesses. |
| HHS – Medicare Premiums | $60.4B | Medicare beneficiaries’ own Part B and D premiums, often deducted straight from Social Security checks. |
| Federal Reserve Earnings | $5.5B | Normally far larger: the Fed remits its profits to Treasury. It is currently carrying losses and remitting almost nothing. |
Four trails, end to end
The interest check, and who cashes it
In FY2025 the Treasury paid out $609.2 billion in cash interest on Treasury securities. Budget net interest was $970 billion, and by 2026 gross interest on a trailing twelve-month basis had topped $1.4 trillion. Every one of those dollars went to someone holding a Treasury security on payday: a retiree’s bond mutual fund, a bank’s reserve portfolio, a Japanese pension fund, a money market fund holding a cash sweep account, or the Federal Reserve itself. About 30 cents of every interest dollar goes abroad, to $9.25 trillion in foreign-held Treasuries (July 2026). The twist: the Fed’s $4.49 trillion share would normally generate earnings that flow back to Treasury, but the Fed is nursing losses and currently sends nothing, which is why the DTS deposit line for Federal Reserve earnings collapsed to $5.5 billion.
The Social Security direct deposit
The DTS line “SSA – Benefits Payments” was $1,398.6 billion in FY2025, the single largest withdrawal line in the statement. That money becomes monthly checks averaging $2,071 for a retired worker (January 2026), landing by direct deposit for about 75 million beneficiaries: 58 million retirees, 5.8 million surviving spouses and children, and 8.4 million disabled workers. The loop is visible in the DTS itself: workers’ payroll taxes arrive through the “Withheld Individual/FICA” deposit line, and retirees’ checks leave through the benefits withdrawal line.
The defense paycheck
Two DTS lines show exactly whose hands defense dollars reach without any digging: $105.2 billion in active duty military pay and $71.4 billion in military retirement pay in FY2025. Those are paychecks and pension checks to service members, retirees, and surviving families. The much larger $474.7 billion “DoD – misc” line is where the trail needs USAspending.gov: that is operations, fuel, maintenance, weapons, and contracts, and the award database names the companies.
The tariff loop: money in, money back out
In FY2025, importers paid $215.2 billion in customs and related taxes at U.S. ports. In FY2026, tariff collections surged further, then the Supreme Court struck the tariffs down and the money started flowing back out: $33.38 billion in tariff refunds in July 2026 and another $10.54 billion in August 2026. It is a complete visible loop in the DTS: deposits from importers on the way in, refunds to importers on the way out, with the Treasury General Account holding the balance in between.
How to read this page
Cash, not budget. The DTS is cash accounting. For FY2025, Table II withdrawals totaled about $7.73 trillion while budget outlays were roughly $7.0 trillion. Timing differences explain the gap.
Agencies, not people. The DTS names agencies. End recipients come from agency reports, USAspending.gov, and the Federal Reserve, cited below.
Debt churn is not spending. The statement’s debt tables show about $165 trillion in gross securities “issues” in FY2025. That is mostly rolling over short-term debt and intragovernmental securities, not new spending, so it stays out of these tables.
Vintage matters. Every figure above is labeled with its fiscal year or date. We refresh when the FY2026 year-end statement is available.
Keep exploring
These lines are agency totals. For the structure behind them, see How the Federal Government Is Organized: the 15 departments, how each one spends, and profiles of Defense, HHS, Veterans Affairs, and Treasury. To look up the stock trades, travel, and gifts reported by the officials themselves, see our public officials’ financial disclosures guide.
Sources
- Daily Treasury Statement, September 30, 2025 (full PDF): fiscaldata.treasury.gov
- DTS documentation and publication schedule: Fiscal Data
- Social Security 2026 payments and beneficiaries: SSA press release
- Medicaid and CHIP enrollment, January 2026: CMS snapshot
- Federal Reserve H.4.1 balance sheet, July 1, 2026: federalreserve.gov
- Contract and grant detail: USAspending.gov