How Much of the Federal Debt Would an Independent Texas Owe?

On October 9, 2026, Washington owed $40.30 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. Of that, $32.45 trillion was held by the public, meaning investors, banks, pension funds, foreign governments and the Federal Reserve. The other $7.85 trillion was money the Treasury owes its own trust funds, including those that finance Social Security.

No law fixes how much of that an independent Texas would carry. The Texas Nationalist Movement's position, set out in its 2026 report Can Texas Make It? and in its published answer to the question, is that any figure Washington names is "an opening demand, not a bill," and that a negotiated share could land anywhere from about $3.7 trillion down to zero.

Where the high end comes from

Texas had 31,709,821 residents in July 2025, according to the Census Bureau, which is 9.28 percent of the United States. Its economy produced $2.932 trillion in 2025, 9.50 percent of the total, by the Bureau of Economic Analysis count.

Applied to the gross debt, a population share comes to $3.74 trillion and a share of economic output to $3.83 trillion. Applied only to the debt held by the public, the same two shares come to $3.01 trillion and $3.08 trillion. TNM's report uses a third yardstick, Texas's 8.2 percent of federal tax collections, which put the share at about $3.2 trillion in mid-2026. TNM expects Washington to open with those per-head and per-dollar formulas.

What the treaty says

The one treaty written for this question is the 1983 Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of State Property, Archives and Debts. It has never entered into force. It needs 15 parties, has seven, and the United States is not among them. TNM's answer notes that it binds no one and sets no formula.

For territory that separates to form a new state, Article 40 says the debt passes "in an equitable proportion, taking into account, in particular, the property, rights and interests which pass to the successor State," unless the two sides agree otherwise. TNM's report reads that clause as Texas's strongest legal ground. Federal property on Texas soil, including the bases and the land, goes on the scale against any debt. The report adds that Washington would have to put a value on those assets, and the Defense Department has never passed a full financial audit. The federal government owns 1.9 percent of the land in Texas, along with military bases, ports of entry, courthouses and the Johnson Space Center.

The other side of the ledger

TNM's central argument is that the debt is only half of what gets netted. In its fiscal 2025 Financial Report, the Treasury projects that over 75 years, spending on Social Security, Medicare and other social insurance will exceed the revenue dedicated to them by about $88.4 trillion. TNM's report estimates that Texans paid about 8.7 percent of the taxes that fund Social Security, and puts the accrued Social Security and Medicare benefits owed to Texans on the order of $7.7 trillion, about $2.4 trillion of it Social Security. The report describes that figure as a long-term federal obligation brought to the table as a claim, not cash in an account. Either the benefits keep flowing by agreement, TNM's answer says, or those claims are weighed against any debt share Washington tries to assign.

Methods and precedents

Scholarship offers no single formula. Daniel Blum's 1997 survey in the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, which TNM cites, sets out four methods of dividing a debt: by population, by share of economic output, by historical benefits received, and by a balance sheet that matches debt to assets received. By the report's reckoning, the first two land near $3.6 trillion to $3.7 trillion, and the last two can drive Texas's share toward zero. The report also quotes Matt Qvortrup, a scholar of how new states form, who told the movement that an independent Texas would not be liable for the federal debt.

Separations have ended in very different places. When Czechoslovakia divided at the start of 1993, the constitutional act on dividing federal property split most assets, and the federation's obligations from earlier foreign-currency credits, two to one, the ratio of the Czech and Slovak populations. Ireland's 1921 treaty made the Irish Free State liable for part of the United Kingdom's public debt "in such proportion as may be fair and equitable." Four years later a new agreement declared that "The Irish Free State is hereby released from the obligation."

Total federal debt grew by $2.664 trillion between September 30, 2025, and October 9, 2026. A population share of that one stretch of borrowing comes to about $247 billion.