Debt to the Penny is the headline number: debt held by the public plus intragovernmental holdings, as of the close of each business day. It crossed 40 trillion dollars in September 2026.
Because it is daily, it shows the slope as well as the level. Between 2 September 2025 and 9 September 2026 the total rose by 2.66 trillion dollars, about 7.2 billion dollars a day including weekends.
It is the first row of the ledger the paper reads before it reads any promise.