This is a dataset that tracks several figures regarding US debt (to the penny) since 1993.
All data are official figures from the U.S. Treasury that have been compiled and structured by myself. Dates on the weekend (Saturday and Sunday), as well as federal holidays, are excluded from the debt tracker because the fiscal data publicly available does not account for those days. Recent political debates in the US over the potential raising of the debt ceiling has inspired me to create this dataset. Personally, I believe that the issue will continue to dominate political discourse due to the increasing polarization between Democrats and Republicans.
The primary data source used was the U.S. Treasury's official website, which publishes fiscal data pertaining to the American government. Considering the meticulous documentation of federal spending by the Treasury, no other authority is more equipped to provide insight on US debt.
- U.S. Treasury's FiscalData Website - The United States Department of the Treasury published daily updates on the national debt since April 1st, 1993. However, intragovernmental holdings and total public debt outstanding have only been accounted for at the end of each fiscal year since 1997. Daily updates for those two statistics officially began since March 31st, 2005.
- U.S. Treasury's Finance Guide to the National Debt - The United States Department of the Treasury released a detailed overview of the national debt and how it operates in conjunction with American society. The guide mainly provided essential contextual knowledge needed to create a meaningful dataset.
- Debt Held by the Public
- Intragovernmental Holdings
- Total Public Debt Outstanding
2023-02-17 - Dataset is created (10,914 days after temporal coverage start date).
Kaggle Dataset - The same data but on Kaggle.
Link to Notebook Important: Each new record is accumulated data from previous days.