The claim: The national debt has been paid

A Nov. 7 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) includes a TikTok video that shows a woman reviewing paperwork that purportedly proves the U.S. no longer owes any money to its creditors.

“National Debt has been paid,” reads text superimposed in the video.

It was shared more than 600 times in six days. The original TikTok video was shared more than 1,000 times since Sept. 21, and it was shared more than 1,000 times in six days on the X platform, formerly Twitter.

Our rating: False

The national debt is more than $33.7 trillion, according to U.S. Treasury Department calculations. Experts say it has not been paid off, and there is no credible evidence of its elimination.

Video shows ‘a bunch of jumbled things,’ not proof of debt payoff

The TikTok video shows a woman off-camera going through several documents, including a 2017 letter to then-President Donald Trump that purportedly accompanied a $21 trillion payment to eliminate the national debt. The woman states, “Our debts have been paid off.”

But they haven’t, experts say. The national debt – the total amount of money the federal government has borrowed to cover its expenses – climbed to more than $33.7 trillion as of Nov. 16, according to the U.S. Treasury Department’s online debt tracker.

“I’m not aware of anything like what she’s talking about,” Will McBride, the vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, an independent tax policy nonprofit, said in an email to USA TODAY.

Steve Ellis, the president of the budget watchdog organization Taxpayers for Common Sense, also told USA TODAY the claim is false.

The video shows “a bunch of jumbled things that you can’t really see thrown together to sound official,” he said in an email.

The payoff letter supposedly originated from a government agency called the Office of Military Settlements. But there is no credible evidence such an organization exists. Its listed address is the same as a shipping and mailbox rental business in Upland, California, according to a Google Maps search.

That letter is signed by a “General Zeleny, Trustee.” When contacted by USA TODAY at the email address and the California-based phone number appearing in the letter, the person claiming to be Zeleny declined to provide evidence to support the claim.

Ellis said, “It seems like a combination of letters from a fake organization and some other documents thrown together to make up a pile and make it look official.”

A separate document dated March 13, 2017, purports to show a payment of $21 trillion, “which is what our debt ceiling was in 2017,” the woman said. While the debt limit was reinstated in March 2017, that figure was set at $19.8 trillion, not $21 trillion, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The woman also falsely claims Americans are due refunds from the government and will no longer owe taxes.

That’s not the case, Ellis said. “Even if the debt was paid off – which it isn’t – you would have to pay taxes to keep (the government) running.”

Only once in U.S. history has the national debt been completely paid – in 1835, when it shrank to zero under President Andrew Jackson, according to the Treasury Department.

It was $10.6 trillion when Barack Obama took office in January 2009, reached $19.9 trillion on the first day of Trump’s presidency in 2017 and was $27.8 trillion on the day of Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration, according to Treasury Department data.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post on Facebook but did not immediately receive a response. The TikTok user who shared it did not provide evidence to support the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

• Steve Ellis, Nov. 14, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• Will McBride, Nov. 13, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• Google Maps, accessed Nov. 15, 305 N. Second Ave., Upland, California
• U.S. Treasury Department, Nov. 14, Debt to the Penny
• U.S. Treasury Department, Nov. 14, What is the national debt?
• U.S. Treasury Department, accessed Nov. 15, The History of the Debt
• Bipartisan Policy Center, accessed Nov. 15, The Debt Limit Through the Years

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