US debt outstanding $40,032,876,505,819
The Real Steal
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Editorial illustration for: How entries qualify

How entries qualify

The rules that keep the anger honest.

Every entry names who got the money. No beneficiary, no entry — a deficit alone is not a steal.

Both columns hold the same standard: official scores and disbursement records, projections labeled as projections, one policy counted once, and unlike numbers never summed — dollars, people, and percentages stay in separate, labeled visuals.

Both parties show up wherever the receipts put them — the borrowing itself is bipartisan: +$7.8T under Trump's first term, +$8.5T under Biden, +$3.8T in the first 19 months of Trump's second (Treasury, inauguration-day readings). But debt alone is not a steal: the ledger records only transfers with a named beneficiary. Corrections stay on the record — it shows its erasures. The point isn't neutrality. It's that you can check every line yourself.

Receipts: Treasury · CBO · JCT via CBPP