A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI
(A revised article I wrote in 2007)

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This isn’t another budget debate or partisan volley. It’s about speed — the speed at which the United States is piling on debt and the narrowing time we have to manage it.

I’ve pulled together data from Treasury’s Debt to the Penny database, the Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, the Federal Reserve’s cash-balance series, and the government’s own Financial Report. What they show is sobering — and I’m grateful to everyone who keeps these numbers public so we can study them together.

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1. The Warning Is in the Speed, Not the Size

When we talk about a $38 trillion national debt, it’s hard for anyone to feel the difference between $36 trillion and $38 trillion. But here’s what matters: the U.S. added that last trillion in just 71 days.

Below is the table Treasury’s own data produces — the number of days it took to move from one trillion-dollar threshold to the next.

From ($T)	To ($T)	From Date	To Date	Days Between
4	5	1993-04-01	1996-02-23	1,058
5	6	1996-02-23	2002-02-26	2,195
6	7	2002-02-26	2004-01-15	688
7	8	2004-01-15	2005-10-18	642
8	9	2005-10-18	2007-08-31	682
9	10	2007-08-31	2008-09-30	396
10	11	2008-09-30	2009-03-16	167
11	12	2009-03-16	2009-11-16	245
12	13	2009-11-16	2010-06-01	197
13	14	2010-06-01	2010-12-31	213
14	15	2010-12-31	2011-11-15	319
15	16	2011-11-15	2012-08-31	290
16	17	2012-08-31	2013-10-17	412
17	18	2013-10-17	2014-11-28	407
18	19	2014-11-28	2016-01-29	427
19	20	2016-01-29	2017-09-08	588
20	21	2017-09-08	2018-03-15	188
21	22	2018-03-15	2019-02-11	333
22	23	2019-02-11	2019-10-31	262
23	24	2019-10-31	2020-04-07	159
24	25	2020-04-07	2020-05-05	28
25	26	2020-05-05	2020-06-09	35
26	27	2020-06-09	2020-10-01	114
27	28	2020-10-01	2021-03-01	151
28	29	2021-03-01	2021-12-16	290
29	30	2021-12-16	2022-01-31	46
30	31	2022-01-31	2022-10-03	245
31	32	2022-10-03	2023-06-15	255
32	33	2023-06-15	2023-09-15	92
33	34	2023-09-15	2023-12-29	105
34	35	2023-12-29	2024-07-26	210
35	36	2024-07-26	2024-11-21	118
36	37	2024-11-21	2025-08-11	263
37	38	2025-08-11	2025-10-21	71

It used to take years to add a trillion. Now it takes weeks. That’s the real warning light on the dashboard.

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2. Shorter Maturities, Smaller Margin

Back in 1993 the average maturity of Treasury debt was roughly 12½ years.
Today it’s about 6 years, and roughly 22 percent of all marketable debt matures within one year.

Shorter maturities look smart when short-term rates are low, but they force the Treasury back to the market more often — like refinancing your mortgage every few months instead of every decade. If investors ever hesitate, even briefly, there’s an avalanche of maturing debt right behind it.

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3. Why It Behaves Like a Ponzi — Even Though It Isn’t One

This isn’t fraud; it’s math.

Every month, new Treasury borrowing pays off old Treasury borrowing and covers the interest on what’s left. As long as new buyers keep showing up, the machine runs smoothly.

That’s also what keeps a Ponzi scheme alive — until confidence fades or inflows slow. The difference is that the U.S. government can tax, print, and regulate. But even governments can’t repeal arithmetic: if debt grows faster than income and the refinancing window gets shorter, confidence becomes the currency.

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4. The “Trust-Fund” Holders — Borrowed from Ourselves

A surprising amount of the debt isn’t owed to the public at all — it’s owed to ourselves. About $7½ trillion of today’s $38 trillion total is intragovernmental debt: money that one part of the government has lent to another.

The biggest lenders:

Rank	Trust Fund / Account	Holdings ($ B)
1	Other government accounts (aggregate)	2,675
2	Social Security – OASI Trust Fund	2,466
3	Federal Employees Retirement Funds	904
4	Medicare Trust Funds (HI + SMI)	447
5	Social Security – DI Trust Fund	211
6	Unemployment Trust Fund	98
7	Highway Trust Fund	88
8	Deposit Insurance Fund (FDIC)	109
9	Federal Housing Administration (FHA)	165
10	Smaller & legacy funds (Post Office, Airport & Airway, Railroad Retirement, etc.)	< 60 each

Each fund holds special-issue Treasury securities — assets on its books, liabilities on the Treasury’s. They don’t have cash in vaults; they have receivables from the Treasury. When benefits are due, the Treasury must come up with cash — through taxes or by borrowing again from the public.

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5. True Operating Cash — The Real Checkbook

So how much money does the federal government actually have to operate on?

Treasury’s Operating Cash Balance (OCB) — its checkbook at the Federal Reserve — tells us:

Era	Typical Operating Cash Balance
2000–2007	$20–50 B
2008–2014	$100–300 B
2015–2019	$300–400 B
2020 (COVID peak)	$1.6 T
2021–2022	$700–900 B
2023–2025	$450–950 B fluctuating

The FY 2024 Financial Report listed $871 B in operating cash, while the Fed’s own TGA series showed about $940 B in early November 2025.

That sounds large — until you remember it sits beside $38 trillion in total debt.
It’s not solvency; it’s a buffer measured in weeks.

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6. What the Speed Means

Here’s how the pattern looks through time:

Era	Avg. Days per $1 T	Typical WAM	Character
1990s	1 000–2 000 days	12 years	Predictable growth
2000–2008	~650 days	7–8 years	Moderate deficits
2009–2016	160–600 days	5–6 years	Crisis & recovery
2017–2019	200–330 days	6 years	Late-cycle looseness
2020–2025	28–263 days	5–6 years	Acceleration, pandemic, politics

The system now borrows faster and must refinance sooner — two lines on the same graph, both curving downward toward zero.

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7. Why the Trust Funds Don’t Save Us

Social Security, Medicare, and federal pensions hold trillions, but they hold them as special Treasuries. When those are redeemed to pay retirees, the Treasury must find cash. That means the same public borrowing that funded the rest of government. In short, we have IOUs to ourselves — promises backed by the same overworked credit card.

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8. Cash Flow, Confidence, and Collapse Risk

Operating cash around $800 B seems comfortable until you realize that roughly $8 trillion of marketable debt will mature within a year. That means Treasury is always just a few bad auctions away from a scramble — not because of insolvency, but because of timing. In financial systems, timing failures can look like insolvency long before real default occurs.

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9. Shared Credit Where It’s Due

Much of this analysis builds on open Treasury and Federal Reserve data —
the Debt to the Penny dataset, the Monthly Statement of the Public Debt, the Financial Report of the United States Government, and the FRED time series for the Treasury General Account. Every citizen can look at the same numbers and come to their own conclusions. My goal here — and I hope yours too — is to keep those facts visible before they blur together.

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10. The Takeaway

Debt itself is not immoral. It built our highways, won our wars, and carried us through a pandemic. But when the speed of borrowing outruns the time to repay, we trade stability for convenience.

In 1993, the U.S. had an average debt maturity of twelve years and a trillion-dollar increase every few years. Today, maturities average six years and a trillion arrives every couple of months.

That’s not a cliff yet — but it’s a downhill grade with failing brakes.

The danger isn’t only the size of the debt. It’s the speed at which it is accumulating.

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Data sources: U.S. Department of the Treasury – Debt to the Penny, Monthly Statement of the Public Debt (Table FD-3, June 2025), Daily Treasury Statement, Financial Report of the U.S. Government (FY 2024), and Federal Reserve FRED series WTREGEN (Treasury General Account).