Billy Tompson: US debt ceiling: how big is it and how has it changed?

Saturday, July 16, 2011

US debt ceiling: how big is it and how has it changed?

What is the US debt ceiling and how has it changed over time?
? Get the data

The US debt ceiling is in the news as Barack Obama warns the US risks "running out of time" to raise the limit on government borrowing. The warning comes as ratings agency Standard & Poor's threatens to strip the US of its AAA standing.

Obama and Republican leaders in Congress are arguing over terms for approving an increase in the US's $14.3 trillion (�8.9tn) debt ceiling by the 2 August deadline.

But what is the debt ceiling? Under US law, all government borrowing has to be approved by Congress, and they do this by limiting the amount that can be borrowed: this is the debt ceiling.

According to the US Treasury, Congress has acted 78 times since 1960 to

permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit ? 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents

The last time it went up, in February 2010, the figure increased to $14.294 trillion. As of now, the debt is at that limit.

According to estimates from the last US budget, that debt is predicted to keep going up - to $20.8tn by the end of 2016. We've also looked at the size of the US national debt and the size of foreign holdings of US treasury bonds here.

We've extracted the full data from a mix of the White House OMB's historic budget tables, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the US Treasury to show how the ceiling has changed since 1940, and which party was in power at the time.

You can download the full data below. What can you do with it?