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Peak Weimerica: Treasury Begins Accepting Venmo Donations To Reduce The National Debt

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by blueapples
Friday, Jul 25, 2025 - 19:56

Despite a soaring national debt that eclipsed $37 trillion in early July, it's business as usual for the spendthrifts in Washington DC. While the US Treasury Department has downplayed the one-way ticket to bankruptcy the country is on track for by endorsing massive spending packages that will increase the deficit, it has started to resort to desperate tactics to reconcile how deep in the red the nation has become. The Treasury has officially started to accept donations from private citizens to pay back the national debt via Venmo. The move demonstrates the lengths the government will go to avoid being fiscally conservative, even if it means shamelessly begging.

Although the decision to implement digital payment services like Venmo is a new development, accepting donations from individuals to help reduce the national debt has been a longstanding policy of the Treasury. The treasury began operating its Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt program in 1996. Donations can be made through the Treasury's Bureau of Fiscal Service on a platform it operates called Pay.gov. The Treasury accepts donations in the form of money or personal property. Before including Venmo, the Treasury already accepted cash payments via bank transfer, credit card, or PayPal.

Despite the sheer absurdity of the premise, Treasury data indicates that the government has received approximately $120,000 in donations a month since 2020. The Treasury received more than $2.7 million in donations alone in 2024, an increase of nearly 3 times as much as the roughly $1 million it accepted in 2023. Year to date, it has received $434,500 in donations out from naive Americans who are fueling the federal governments avarice. Since the Treasury began accepting donations to pay down the national debt, it has received $67.3 million. For context, current US spending rates surpass that amount every 5 minutes and 3 seconds with $222,000 being spent every second based on projections of $7 trillion in federal outlays for FY2025 from the Congressional Budget Office.

The nonsensical decision to add Venmo as a payment option is best conveyed by the fact that the digital payment processor caps payments at $999,999.99. At that limit of just under $1 million, someone donating that amount wouldn't even be able to cover the increase added to the national debt in the time it took to process their transaction. It would take a donation of $108,320 from every US citizen just to bring the debt down to zero. Even then, current spending levels would immediately put the US back into the red, with USDebtClock.org showing the current federal deficit steadily increasing at over $2 trillion.

According to Archive.org's Wayback Machine, the Treasury added Venmo as a payment option on Pay.gov sometime between February 22nd and March 8th of this year. The addition had gone unnoticed since, until NPR reporter Jack Corbett first brought the revelation to light on July 23rd. Corbett's report comes after Congress approved a bill to cut $1.1 billion in federal funding for public media outlets like NPR. While Corbett and his cohorts are incensed at the decision to cut funding for public broadcasting, his report ironically highlights the need for the government to drastically reduce its spending.

Thomas Jefferson succinctly surmised the existential threat that reckless spending posed to the nation when he opined that banking institutions are more dangerous to American's liberties than standing armies. While Jefferson likely could not have envisioned the insurmountable levels of debt the banking system would bring, it's even less likely that he could have foreseen that Americans would be stupid enough to donate to the very system bankrupting their nation — both financially and morally.

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