US National Debt Tracker & DOGE Budget Cut Simulator

US National Debt Tracker: DOGE Budget Cut Simulator

Model how a given level of federal spending cuts would change the deficit, interest costs and debt-to-GDP, starting from Treasury's fiscal 2024 figures, and compare it with what DOGE actually promised and what Congress enacted.

• Gross federal debt: $35,850 B — Treasury Debt to the Penny, late October 2024
• Interest on the debt: $1,120 B — Gross interest expense, fiscal 2024 (rounded)
• Annual deficit: $1,830 B — Fiscal 2024: $6.75T outlays vs $4.92T receipts
• Nominal GDP: $29,180 B — US GDP for calendar 2024 (BEA)

Federal Spending Cut and Debt Trajectory Simulator

Choose an annual cut and how many years it lasts. The tool returns cumulative savings, interest avoided, the new annual deficit and the debt-to-GDP path.

• Cumulative savings: $4,000 B
• Interest saved per year by the end: $125 B/yr
• Projected annual deficit: $705 B/yr
• Debt-to-GDP, today → end of period: 122.9% → 114.0%

How this US national debt tracker calculates the result

The simulator starts from four published figures. Gross federal debt of $35.85 trillion is the level Treasury's Debt to the Penny series reported at the end of October 2024. The fiscal 2024 deficit of $1.83 trillion is the gap between $6.75 trillion of outlays and $4.92 trillion of receipts in Treasury's Monthly Treasury Statement. Interest of $1.12 trillion is a rounded figure for gross interest on Treasury securities, which Treasury's interest expense data put at about $1.13 trillion for fiscal 2024. Nominal GDP of $29.18 trillion is the Bureau of Economic Analysis figure for 2024.

From those inputs the model divides interest by debt to get an average rate of about 3.1 percent. Cumulative savings are simply the annual cut times the number of years. The interest saved is that cumulative amount times the average rate, because every dollar not borrowed is a dollar that no longer pays interest. The new deficit is the 2024 deficit minus the annual cut and minus that interest saving, floored at zero. Debt at the end adds the 2024 deficit for each year, subtracts the savings and the interest avoided, and GDP grows 4 percent a year in nominal terms.

With the default inputs, a $1,000 billion annual cut held for four years, savings add up to $4,000 billion, interest falls by about $125 billion a year, the annual deficit drops to about $705 billion, and debt-to-GDP moves from 122.9 percent to 114.0 percent. Set the cut to $150 billion, the figure Elon Musk gave in April 2025, and the deficit barely moves while the ratio still rises to about 124.6 percent over the same four years.

What DOGE promised and what actually changed

The Department of Government Efficiency was set up by Executive Order 14158 on 20 January 2025, which renamed the existing US Digital Service and gave a temporary DOGE organization a term ending on 4 July 2026. During the campaign Elon Musk spoke of cutting at least $2 trillion. In January 2025 he described $2 trillion as a best case and $1 trillion as a good outcome, and at an April 2025 cabinet meeting he said he expected about $150 billion of savings in fiscal 2026. He left his government role at the end of May 2025.

Only Congress can cancel money it has appropriated. The one DOGE-linked package that became law was the Rescissions Act of 2025, signed in July 2025, which cancelled about $9 billion, mostly foreign aid plus funding for public broadcasting. Savings listed on the DOGE website were larger, but reviews by news organizations found double counting and contracts whose cancellation saved far less than the headline value. Meanwhile most spending sits in Social Security, Medicare, defense and interest, none of which an efficiency office can cut on its own.

How to read the numbers and where the model stops

Treat the output as arithmetic, not a forecast. The model holds the baseline deficit flat, while the Congressional Budget Office projects deficits that grow over time as interest and entitlement costs rise. It assumes the full cut applies from the first year and is never reversed, and it ignores the effect of spending cuts on growth and tax receipts, which can reduce the net saving. The interest line uses gross interest, part of which the government pays to its own trust funds, so read it as an upper bound.

The useful comparison is between scenarios. Move the cut from the campaign promise down to the amounts actually enacted and watch how little the debt ratio changes. For investors, the variables that matter for bond supply and inflation are the ones in Treasury statements and Congressional Budget Office scores, not announcements. This tool is for education and is not investment advice.