The US Department of the Treasury is accepting donations from Americans who use Venmo and PayPal to reduce the $36.7 trillion national debt.
The new payment option was quietly added to the federal “Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt” program, an initiative that has existed since 1996. Users can now access Pay.gov and use the digital platforms to send voluntary contributions toward the debt, as first reported by NPR’s Jack Corbett.
you can venmo the United States to help pay off the national debt pic.twitter.com/UBfSvbAIx0
— Jack Corbett (@jackcorrbit) July 23, 2025
According to Treasury officials, Venmo and PayPal will make it easier for civic-minded Americans to contribute. Since its inception, the donation initiative has collected $67.3 million, an amount that is dwarfed by the sheer size of the federal debt.
Debt surged nearly 90% since 2010
The current US national debt has surged by 87% since 2010, when it stood at $19.59 trillion. The Treasury Department has warned that ballooning deficits have placed America’s fiscal sustainability at risk. According to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, the total debt grew at nearly $55,000 every second over the past year alone.
The donations may be entirely voluntary, but in the eyes of naysayers, those individual contributions, regardless of how many, cannot significantly alter the country’s downward looking fiscal trajectory.
“If every American donated $1,000 right now, it still wouldn’t make a meaningful dent,” said Shawn French, host of “The Determined Society” podcast. “This feels more like desperation than strategy.”
French said the US government’s plea is “a massive distraction” and “a last-ditch attempt” of asking the public to help bring down the debt, but the current administration does not have any viable structural reforms.
Samson Mow, CEO of Bitcoin technology firm JAN3, compared the program to “sending Bitcoin to a burn address,” an irreversible crypto transaction that results in token destruction.
The Treasury reiterated that the donation option is a chance for patriotic individuals to contribute to “Making America Great Again,” no matter how small the impact may be on the overall balance sheet.
Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ adds trillions to debt
The recently passed and signed legislation backed by President Donald Trump, referred to as the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” is expected to increase the national debt by $3.4 trillion over the next decade, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
A contentious element of the now-passed law was the decision to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, which several economic commentators, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, were loudly unhappy about. The billionaire entrepreneur coined the law as “fiscally reckless.”
The Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday that more than 10 million Americans will be uninsured under the provisions of the new law by 2034. This figure is a slight improvement over earlier projections that estimated 11.8 million would lose health coverage over the next decade.
“Today’s report reminds us of something: facts are stubborn and the facts are clear,” remarked Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. “The big, ugly betrayal is a loser for the country and will be a loser for the Republicans.”
Conservative lawmakers have continued to defend the legislation, claiming it was necessary to pass it to prevent tax increases for millions of Americans. Supporters believe the US economy will outperform the CBO’s projections, generating greater tax revenues to narrow the deficit.
