Yes let us look at the first few sentences of the article It says Debt Held by the Public net public debt now you will never see the term net public debt on any U S Treasury document or on any GAO document because the term doesn t exist Someone made that up and posted it on Wikipedia but that has nothing to do with the U S Treasury or the Federal Government and the way they operate because they don t use that language If I was wrong it would very easy to find a U S Treasury publication that uses the term net public debt but you won t find one You will see Debt Held by the Public that is a term clearly defined by the Treasury and the GAO Yes I ve seen the first graph the author used the term public debt and gross debt when it should be labelled Debt Held by the Public and Gross Federal Debt