Debt Subject to the Statutory Limit (Table III-C)

Table III-C measures how close the United States is to its statutory borrowing limit — the debt ceiling. It starts with total public debt outstanding, subtracts the small portion not subject to the limit (such as unamortized discount and Federal Financing Bank debt), and compares the resulting debt subject to limit against the ceiling set by Congress. The gap between the two numbers is the Treasury’s remaining legal borrowing headroom, updated every federal business day — this is the same official figure cited in debt-limit coverage, straight from the Treasury’s books.

When the debt approaches the ceiling, the Treasury turns to accounting tools known as extraordinary measures and spends down the Treasury General Account (Table I) to keep paying the government’s bills, which makes this page and the TGA balance the two key indicators to watch during a standoff. The limit was most recently raised in July 2025, when Congress increased it by $5 trillion to $41.1 trillion. The daily borrowing activity that pushes the debt toward the ceiling is detailed in Public Debt Transactions (Table III-A).