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Accounting treatment

Only debt held by the public is reported as a liability on the consolidated financial statements of the United States government. Debt held by US government accounts is an asset to those accounts but a liability to the Treasury; they offset each other in the consolidated financial statements. Government receipts and expenditures are normally presented on a cash rather than an accrual basis, although the accrual basis may provide more information on the longer-term implications of the government's annual operations. The United States public debt is often expressed as a ratio of public debt to GDP. The ratio of debt to GDP may decrease as a result of a government surplus as well as from growth of GDP and inflation.