The federal ledger

Spending, revenue, debt and entitlements

Federal finances from the U.S. Treasury, with the source period and retrieval history kept visible. Compare receipts, outlays, deficit, customs duties, debt, interest, and benefit-program spending month over month, year over year, and across 5-, 10-, 15-, and 20-year views.

Federal receipts

$557.9B

Sep 2026 · monthly, not seasonally adjusted

Month over month: +55.0%
Year over year: +2.6%

FY 2026 to date: $5.4T · +3.2% vs prior FYTD

Federal outlays

$584.8B

Sep 2026 · monthly, not seasonally adjusted

Month over month: +11.0%
Year over year: +69.2%

FY 2026 to date: $7.4T · +5.5% vs prior FYTD

Federal deficit or surplus

$26.9B deficit

Sep 2026 · monthly, not seasonally adjusted

Month over month: +$139.9B
Year over year: −$224.8B

FY 2026 to date: $2.0T deficit

Customs duties

$5.9B

Sep 2026 · monthly, not seasonally adjusted

Month over month: −54.0%
Year over year: −80.1%

FY 2026 to date: $173.2B · −11.1% vs prior FYTD

History

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Federal receipts and outlays

Actual Treasury budget receipts and outlays. Monthly values are not seasonally adjusted.

ReceiptsOutlays

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Federal deficit or surplus

Monthly receipts minus outlays. Values below zero are deficits; values above zero are surpluses.

SurplusDeficit

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Customs duties (tariff revenue)

Treasury’s reported net customs-duty budget receipts; negative source values remain negative. Monthly values are not seasonally adjusted. Direct monthly API coverage begins in March 2015.

Positive receiptNegative receipt

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The selected range is available for receipts, outlays, and the federal balance. Treasury’s machine-readable monthly customs-duty series begins in March 2015, so that chart starts there rather than implying earlier coverage.

A negative customs-duty value is displayed exactly as Treasury reports it; the site does not replace it with zero or infer a cause.

Debt and its carrying cost

What the government owes—and what interest costs

Debt is a balance measured at a point in time; interest is a monthly outlay. The controls never sum debt into a rolling-12-month total.

Total public debt

$40.2T

Completed month ending Sep 2026

MoM change: −$3.8B
YoY change: +$2.5T

Debt held by the public

$32.4T

Completed month ending Sep 2026

MoM change: +$10.0B
YoY change: +$2.1T

Intragovernmental holdings

$7.7T

Completed month ending Sep 2026

MoM change: −$13.8B
YoY change: +$387.0B

Debt composition

80.7% held by the public

Held by the publicIntragovernmental

Total public debt

Final available business-day balance for each completed calendar month. This stock measure remains monthly even when rolling 12 months is selected above.

Total public debt

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Interest on the public debt

Treasury Table 5 net outlays for interest on the public debt. Monthly values are not seasonally adjusted. Coverage begins in March 2015.

Interest outlayNegative adjustment

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Entitlements and benefit programs

A detailed view without double-counting

These are selected, non-overlapping net-outlay lines from Treasury’s agency-and-program table. “Entitlements” is a public-facing grouping here—not a Treasury legal classification or a complete CBO mandatory-spending total.

Social Security & health

Social Security retirement and disability, Medicare trust funds, Medicaid, and CHIP. Monthly values are not seasonally adjusted. Direct monthly coverage begins in March 2015.

Social Security retirement and survivorsSocial Security disability insuranceMedicare Hospital Insurance (Part A)Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (Parts B and D)Medicaid grants to statesChildren's Health Insurance Program

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Treasury’s machine-readable Table 5 program history begins in March 2015. The selected longer range remains honest by starting these series at the first available month.

Detailed program breakdown

Each row is a distinct Treasury Table 5 net-outlay line. The table does not add these rows into an invented “total entitlements” figure, and negative corrections remain negative.

Program	Latest month	Net outlays	MoM	YoY	Rolling 12 months	Share of monthly outlays
Social Security & healthSocial Security retirement and survivors	Sep 2026	$127.6B	−0.2%	+6.3%	$1.5T	21.8%
Social Security disability insurance	Sep 2026	$13.6B	+0.1%	+2.6%	$162.8B	2.3%
Medicare Hospital Insurance (Part A)	Sep 2026	$41.2B	+112.0%	+74.9%	$468.3B	7.0%
Medicare Supplementary Medical Insurance (Parts B and D)	Sep 2026	$73.2B	+227.1%	+168.7%	$816.6B	12.5%
Medicaid grants to states	Sep 2026	$68.0B	+19.7%	+12.6%	$723.0B	11.6%
Children's Health Insurance Program	Sep 2026	$2.2B	+3.3%	+2.1%	$25.0B	0.4%
Income & nutrition supportSupplemental Security Income	Sep 2026	$6.3B	+986.0%	+458.7%	$70.5B	1.1%
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program	Sep 2026	$7.5B	−1.2%	−15.4%	$95.4B	1.3%
Child nutrition programs	Sep 2026	$1.6B	−8.0%	−18.3%	$33.3B	0.3%
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families	Sep 2026	$1.4B	+3.3%	−15.8%	$17.5B	0.2%
State unemployment benefits	Sep 2026	$1.6B	−49.6%	−41.3%	$36.4B	0.3%
Refundable Earned Income Tax Credit	Sep 2026	$397.4M	−10.4%	+2.2%	$68.5B	0.1%
Refundable Child Tax Credit	Sep 2026	$177.4M	−0.6%	+0.4%	$28.6B	0.0%
Veterans & federal retirementVeterans compensation and pensions	Sep 2026	$1.4B	−92.5%	−62.8%	$223.8B	0.2%
Military Retirement Fund	Sep 2026	$7.0B	+1121.9%	+1158.0%	$83.0B	1.2%
Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund	Sep 2026	$9.7B	+1.1%	+6.4%	$115.9B	1.7%

Latest monthly values

Nominal dollars. Negative balance values are deficits; positive values are surpluses.

Month	Receipts	Outlays	Balance	Customs duties
Sep 2026	$557.9B	$584.8B	-$26.9B	$5.9B
Aug 2026	$360.0B	$526.8B	-$166.8B	$12.8B
Jul 2026	$334.0B	$766.3B	-$432.3B	-$8.5B
Jun 2026	$495.8B	$616.1B	-$120.3B	-$25.6B
May 2026	$335.5B	$628.2B	-$292.6B	-$42.3M
Apr 2026	$837.3B	$622.3B	$215.0B	$22.1B
Mar 2026	$384.9B	$549.0B	-$164.1B	$22.2B
Feb 2026	$313.1B	$620.6B	-$307.5B	$26.6B
Jan 2026	$559.9B	$654.6B	-$94.6B	$27.7B
Dec 2025	$484.4B	$629.1B	-$144.7B	$27.9B
Nov 2025	$336.0B	$509.3B	-$173.3B	$30.8B
Oct 2025	$404.4B	$688.7B	-$284.4B	$31.4B
Sep 2025	$543.7B	$345.7B	$197.9B	$29.7B

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How to read the numbers

Outlays are payments, not commitments

Treasury outlays measure money actually paid. Budget authority, obligations, and program announcements measure different stages of federal finance and are not combined with cash outlays in these charts.

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Definitions and limitations

Seasonality matters

Monthly receipts are not seasonally adjusted and can move sharply around tax deadlines. Year-over-year and rolling-12-month comparisons are usually more informative than a single month-over-month percentage. “Tariff revenue” is labeled with Treasury’s official category, customs duties.

Read the data methodology →

Primary data and historical continuity

Receipt, outlay, balance, customs-duty, interest, and selected program values come from the U.S. Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Service Monthly Treasury Statement. Machine-readable Tables 5 and 9 begin in March 2015. Earlier receipt, outlay, and balance series use the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED historical mirror of that same Treasury release. Monthly debt composition comes from Treasury’s Debt to the Penny dataset and is sampled at the final available business-day balance in each completed month.

Treasury Monthly Statement ↗Treasury Debt to the Penny ↗FRED historical release ↗Source health →