# U.S. Treasury API: Get national debt

> Returns US national debt (Debt to the Penny) for a given date, or the latest published day. Dates without a record use the previous published day.

Unofficial. Not affiliated with or endorsed by U.S. Treasury.

- Page: https://fous.com/methods/home.treasury.gov/get-national-debt
- Method: `home.treasury.gov/get_national_debt`, version 1
- Website: home.treasury.gov
- Returns: date, total public debt outstanding, debt held by the public, intragovernmental holdings
- Effect: read (it gets data and changes nothing)
- Sign-in: none needed
- Cost: 1 credit per completed run (1¢ with pay as you go); failed runs are free
- Verified: Nov 2, 2026

## Inputs

| Field | Type | Required | In the run below | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `date` | string | no |  | Day to look up in YYYY-MM-DD; leave blank to use the latest published day. Dates from 1993-04-01 up to today. Example: 2024-07-04. |

## Output

From a run on Oct 23, 2026. Its input:

```json
{}
```

Its output:

```json
{
  "date": "2026-10-21",
  "currency": "USD",
  "page_url": "https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/",
  "debt_held_by_the_public": 32566346587338.02,
  "intragovernmental_holdings": 7847292424967.95,
  "total_public_debt_outstanding": 40413639012305.97
}
```

## Run it

From code, with a Fous API key in `FOUS_API_KEY`; the answer's `data` holds the output:

```bash
curl https://api.fous.com/v1/runs \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FOUS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"method":"home.treasury.gov/get_national_debt","input":{}}'
```

From an AI agent connected to the Fous MCP server: its `run` with the same method and input. To connect one, give it `set up https://fous.com/SKILL.md`.

## Ask your agent

- What was the total US national debt on July 4, 2024?
- Give me the latest published figure for the national debt outstanding.
- How much of the US debt was held by the public at the end of 2010-12-31?
- Show the intragovernmental holdings portion of the federal debt for 2019-06-30.
- On treasury.gov, what is today's debt to the penny broken down into public and intragovernmental amounts?

## Input schema

```json
{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [],
  "properties": {
    "date": {
      "type": "string",
      "examples": [
        "2024-07-04"
      ],
      "maxLength": 10,
      "minLength": 10,
      "description": "Day to look up in YYYY-MM-DD; leave blank to use the latest published day. Dates from 1993-04-01 up to today. Example: 2024-07-04."
    }
  }
}
```

## Output schema

```json
{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "date",
    "total_public_debt_outstanding",
    "debt_held_by_the_public",
    "intragovernmental_holdings",
    "currency",
    "page_url"
  ],
  "properties": {
    "date": {
      "type": "string",
      "format": "date",
      "description": "Published date used for this record."
    },
    "currency": {
      "type": "string",
      "const": "USD",
      "description": "Currency of the debt amounts."
    },
    "page_url": {
      "type": "string",
      "format": "uri",
      "description": "Treasury page for Debt to the Penny."
    },
    "debt_held_by_the_public": {
      "type": [
        "number",
        "null"
      ],
      "description": "Debt held by the public in US dollars, or null if not reported."
    },
    "intragovernmental_holdings": {
      "type": [
        "number",
        "null"
      ],
      "description": "Intragovernmental holdings in US dollars, or null if not reported."
    },
    "total_public_debt_outstanding": {
      "type": "number",
      "description": "Total public debt outstanding in US dollars."
    }
  },
  "additionalProperties": false
}
```

## See more

- [U.S. Treasury API: Get Treasury yields](https://fous.com/methods/home.treasury.gov/get-treasury-yields.md): Gets official daily Treasury par yield curve rates for a date, or the latest published date on or before it.
- [U.S. Treasury API: Get reporting exchange rates](https://fous.com/methods/treasury.gov/get-reporting-exchange-rates.md): Gets the U.S. Treasury quarterly reporting exchange rate for a country or currency on a given date. If that quarter has no published record, it uses the latest preceding quarter.
- [USAspending API: Get agency spending](https://fous.com/methods/usaspending.gov/get-agency-spending.md): Gets a federal agency's fiscal-year budgetary resources, obligations, share of federal obligations, new award count, top recipients and spending classes from USAspending.
- [European Union API: Get euro exchange rates](https://fous.com/methods/ecb.europa.eu/get-euro-exchange-rates.md): Gets the official ECB euro reference exchange rates for a day, or the latest published day. Weekends, holidays and dates before publication return the previous published day.
- [Macrotrends API: Get long-term price history](https://fous.com/methods/macrotrends.net/get-long-term-price-history.md): Gets decades of yearly commodity or stock-index price history from Macrotrends: yearly average, open, high, low, close, annual change and inflation-adjusted value for gold, silver, crude oil, natural gas, copper, Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The current year may be incomplete.
- [Investing.com API: Get government bond yields](https://fous.com/methods/investing.com/get-bond-yields.md): Gets current government bond yields from Investing.com's world government bonds table, optionally filtered by country and maturity term.
- [Freddie Mac API: Get mortgage rates](https://fous.com/methods/freddiemac.com/get-mortgage-rates.md): Returns Freddie Mac's U.S. 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgage rates for the latest survey or a chosen date, with weekly and year-ago changes, and optionally a weekly history for a date range.
- [European Union API: Convert currency](https://fous.com/methods/ecb.europa.eu/convert-currency.md): Converts an amount between currencies using ECB euro reference rates, including euro and cross-currency conversions. Uses the latest preceding published rate when the date has none.
- [All U.S. Treasury methods](https://fous.com/methods/treasury.gov.md)