Citizens who consult the latest Audited Financial Report of the United States for Fiscal Year 2025 will find the official estimate of the nation’s total debt is $39 trillion, but what federal officials don’t tell Americans is that the actual total debt is $170.3 trillion or more than 4.5 times the approved Treasury figure.

How to account for the $131 trillion in national debt federal officials aren’t disclosing is explained in a new analysis by Truth in Accounting, the Chicago-based nonprofit government watchdog that advocates for honesty and transparency in government spending and debt policies.

“Truth in Accounting’s (TIA) analysis of the most recent audited Financial Report of the U.S. Government found its overall financial condition worsened by $11.6 trillion in 2025. The mounting debt burden of $170.3 trillion represents the total benefits promised to citizens, yet the federal government has no clear idea where the money will come from to pay for them. This staggering debt translates to a $1.1 million liability for every federal taxpayer, resulting in the federal government receiving a failing grade for its fiscal health,” the TIA analysis explains.

Two of the oldest federal entitlement programs are the source of the bulk of the uncounted trillions — Medicare and Social Security. The former has promised beneficiaries $74.5 trillion in payments that the federal government currently has no way of paying, while the total for the latter is $54 trillion.

Throw in another $51.5 trillion for promised military and civil service pensions, plus other obligations and revenues received for the latest complete fiscal year, and the total equals $170.3 trillion. Officials pegged the official annual spending deficit for 2025 at $1.8 billion, but in fact the total national debt increased $11.6 trillion in one fiscal year.

“The Treasury Department only included a fraction — $269 billion — of Social Security and Medicare liabilities on the federal balance sheet because, according to government documents, recipients do not have the right to any benefits beyond those to be paid in the near term, and laws to reduce or stop future benefits can be passed at any time,” according to TIA.

In other words, federal officials can commit to pay any specified individual or group of individuals any amount, whether or not such promises are actually payable out of current or projected assets without worrying about being prosecuted for making false promises.

The 2025 OASDI Trustees Report projects that Social Security will completely delete the funding source of current benefits in 2032. Just two decades ago, the same trustees projected the funding source would not hit bottom until 2041. This funding problem is not new, as seen in the 2005 report warning that the program is "seriously under-funded and financially unsustainable in the long run … taxes would have to be raised immediately by 3.5 percentage points, or benefits reduced immediately by 22 percent” when the funding sources were empty.

The same dire situation obtains with Medicare, even though it is 30 years younger than Social Security. According to the 2025 Medicare Trustees Report, available funding for the Hospital and Supplemental Medical Insurance Trust Funds will be exhausted in 2033. Twenty years prior, the same Medicare trustee report projected exhaustion by 2020. Only the introduction of the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) in 2007 delayed the empty date, with major Medicare levies in the years following, including surcharges added in 2011 and annual premium adjustments as allowed under the MMA.

The most recent attempt to implement significant reforms designed to reform and strengthen Social Security came in 2004 when then-President George W. Bush proposed the addition of voluntary personal investment accounts that would allow working Americans to devote a portion of their contributions (i.e. taxes) to privately management funds.

“Younger workers should have the opportunity to build a nest egg by saving part of their Social Security taxes in a personal retirement account. We should make the Social Security system a source of ownership for the American people,” Bush told Congress in his 2004 State of the Union Address. He was re-elected in November of that year to a second term in the Oval Office.

“He mentioned the issue repeatedly during the 2004 campaign and was able to argue that his reelection represented a mandate to move forward on what he called personal accounts (and his adversaries called partial privatization),” according to the liberal Brookings Institution in a 2007 analysis. Bush restated his proposal in his 2005 State of the Union speech.

“Having invested so much political capital in this issue, President Bush embarked on the first of what proved to be a long series of tours crammed with events at which he pitched his plan to the people. It soon became apparent that it would be a tough sell. Within weeks, observers noticed that the more the President talked about Social Security, the more support for his plan declined.”

Virtually all Democrats in Congress vigorously opposed the Bush proposal, and Republicans were seriously divided on the issue. Consequently, by October of 2005, Bush had officially given up the effort.