They also explain some apparent discrepancies:
After accounting for cash, the discrepancy in December was small, and is explained by little changes across Treasury’s several dozen other financial accounts, which include obscure assets like securities in the National Railroad Retirement Investment Fund, accounts at the International Monetary Fund, Special Drawing Rights, etc.
What about the change over all of calendar year 2014? The Treasury reported deficits of $488 billion but borrowed $668 billion. What happened with the other $180 billion? Again, cash explains part of it. Cash rose from $162 billion to $223 billion. That’s $61 billion accounted for and $119 billion unexplained.
What else does the government do in addition to spending and accumulating cash? It issues loans. The government’s loan financing climbed by $118 billion over the course of 2014. With lending programs, the government borrows from the public and turns around and lends out that money. (Most direct lending from the government is for student loans, but the departments of transportation, agriculture and energy, the Small Business Administration and the Export-Import bank all have significant lending programs too.)
Lending is not spending. If the government spends $1 million the money is gone. If the government makes $1 million in loans to lots of different borrowers, the odds are that most of the loans will be paid back. To be sure, these programs carry credit risk and can cost the taxpayer money when loans aren’t repaid. The solar-energy company Solyndra famously defaulted on a $535 million loan from the Energy Department, for example. But even Solyndra was part of a much bigger energy lending program that has an overall loss ratio of about 2%.
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/01/26/you-ask-we-answer-why-is-the-debt-rising-faster-than-the-deficit/?mod=djemRTE_h
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