Half a century of carrying the national debt.
The Department of the Treasury's budget authority, FY1976– FY2031, from OMB's Historical Tables. This is agency-wide budget authority — overwhelmingly Interest on the Public Debt — so the line is essentially the cost of carrying the national debt: it climbs with the debt and with interest rates, high in the early-1980s rate era and rising again in the post-2021 rate surge. It is not Treasury's discretionary program budget.
FY2027 budget authority
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nominal · OMB estimate · mostly interest
Series peak
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Series span
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0 fiscal years
Years parsed
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contiguous, numeric — self-checked
Treasury budget authority — the arc
nominal (current $) · OMB Historical Table 5.2Reading the arc
Almost all of this line is Interest on the Public Debt, so it does not move with policy choices about Treasury's programs — it moves with the size of the federal debt and with interest rates. The early-1980s climb reflects the high-rate era; the post-2021 surge reflects both a much larger debt and rates rising off the floor. That is exactly why a department-level monitor must keep this agency-wide budget authority separate from the discretionary program budget — the program side is a small, deliberately-appropriated number that this line would otherwise swallow. This series is shown in nominal dollars: OMB's Historical Table 5.2 does not publish a constant-dollar basis, and we do not synthesize one.