In order to reduce the pressure on the huge national debt, the U.S. Treasury Department has now decided to allow people to make voluntary donations through Venmo and PayPal payment channels.This move adds these two most popular P2P payment platforms in the United States to the original bank transfer, debit card and credit card payment methods on the Pay.gov website's "Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt" page.
The endowment program was established by Congress in 1996, but has so far raised only $67.3 million—about 0.0002% of the current $36.7 trillion national debt. According to network archive records cited by NPR, the new payment channel appears to have been added after February 22 to lower the operating threshold for small individual donations.
Data from the U.S. Treasury Department show that the U.S. national debt has nearly doubled since 2010 and is currently growing at a rate of nearly $55,000 per second. While policy analysts view the Venmo and PayPal options as more symbolic, the Treasury Department's decision underscores how the U.S. government is seeking new avenues to highlight the size of its fiscal deficit — and that voluntary donations are likely to play a minimal role in solving the problem.