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Where the Debt-Clock data come from

Whose National-Debt Numbers?
The data plotted here were taken directly from the White House web site and plotted without modification. For details, see ([#Source]).

The gross national debt is reported (almost) daily by the U.S. Treasury at Debt to the Penny xlnk.gif Our clock is updated every weekday (see below) which makes it the most accurate on the web.*

What determines the speed of the clock?
Some days the debt actually goes down, and others it goes up extra fast. Since no one knows what it will do on any given day we just show it increasing at its average rate, because that's the best guess. But what average rate?

The Office of Management and Budget at the White House predicts the "Gross Federal Debt" for the next few years. At the end of the fiscal year 2005, (Sept. 30 2005) they list the debt at $8,031.4 billion. They predict it will be $676 billion higher at the end of the next fiscal year. That is the average rate of increase per year assumed by the clock.

For daily Debt Held by the Public xlnk.gif
For monthly Social Security Trust xlnk.gif
Fed. Use: Securities Held Outright xlnk.gif

 

Popnotes used above:

[=Source]What Is the Source of the Date in the Historic Graph?

The data is from the historical tables in the 2006 OMB Budget as downloaded from WhiteHouse.gov Historical Tables (Bush WH no longer available). The data are plotted without modification. Here is the relevant two page Table 7.1 in PDF format.

The data and graph are available in this Excel spreadsheet.