Federal Debt Doubles in a Decade to $40.2 Trillion, Auditors Find
GAO's audit of the Treasury's debt records puts the federal debt at $40.2 trillion, up 105 percent in ten years, with interest on publicly held debt near $1.1 trillion. Texans' share of that interest comes to about $99 billion.
Washington’s debt more than doubled over the last ten fiscal years, from $19.6 trillion in 2016 to $40.2 trillion on September 30, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported Monday in its annual audit of the Treasury’s debt records.
The audit covers the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the Treasury office that issues the debt and keeps the books on it. GAO found those books accurate and the office’s controls effective. The trouble is in what the books record. Total debt rose about $2.5 trillion in fiscal 2026 alone, and $2.1 trillion of that increase is debt held by the public, money borrowed from investors outside the federal government. That debt is growing “mainly because the federal government continues to spend more than it collects in revenue,” GAO wrote. The deficit for the year was about $2.0 trillion, up from about $1.8 trillion in 2025.
Interest is climbing faster than the debt. Interest on debt held by the public nearly tripled in five years, from about $392 billion in fiscal 2021 to about $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2026, which GAO attributes to “growing debt and higher interest rates.” GAO’s summary puts total interest costs, a broader measure, at $1.4 trillion.
The ceiling is close. Debt subject to the federal debt limit passed $40 trillion on October 1, against a limit of $41.1 trillion. Once the limit is reached, the Treasury will have to use what GAO calls extraordinary measures until Congress raises or changes it. The Treasury’s daily ledger showed $40.56 trillion in total public debt on November 9. GAO cites Congressional Budget Office projections of deficits averaging more than $2.4 trillion a year over the next decade, and it called the federal fiscal outlook “unsustainable.” GAO repeated its recommendation that Congress and the administration adopt a strategy to address it.
Texans pay a share of that interest. In fiscal 2025, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collected $479.5 billion in gross federal taxes from Texas, about 9.0 percent of the $5.31 trillion it collected in total. Applied to the $1.1 trillion in interest on publicly held debt, which is how the Texas Nationalist Movement’s report Can Texas Make It? measures the Texas share, Texans’ portion of the fiscal 2026 interest comes to about $99 billion. The IRS counts taxes by the filer’s address, so a company headquartered in Texas is counted there even when its operations are elsewhere, and the figure is an estimate on that basis.
None of that $99 billion pays for anything in Texas. It services money Washington has already spent. The debt limit and the deficit will both be settled in Congress, where Texas holds 38 of the 435 House seats and two of the 100 Senate seats. Texans will pay their share of the interest whatever those 535 members decide.
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