(The Center Square) – The U.S. national debt as of Monday officially topped $35 trillion, a grim milestone for the U.S. government and the economy as the national debt continues to soar each year.
The national debt has nearly tripled in the last 20 years.
“If this sounds familiar, we only just reached $34 trillion at the very end of 2023,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement after the milestone. “We passed $33 trillion three months before that and $32 trillion three months before that. The borrowing just keeps marching along, reckless and unyielding.”
MacGuineas said the U.S. annual deficit is on track to hit almost $2 trillion this year and nearly $3 trillion in ten years.
Before COVID-19, deficits remained under $1 trillion, but since the pandemic they have been well above the previously unbroken $1 trillion-dollar mark.
Medicare and Social Security are on the path to insolvency because of the worsening fiscal situation, according to budget groups. Meanwhile, the cost of interest on the national debt has doubled since President Joe Biden took office and is on track to be the single largest expense for the federal government, more than entitlements or national defense.
“CBO projects that interest costs in 2024 will total $892 billion — a jump of 36 percent from the previous year and following increases of 35 and 38 percent in each of the two years before that,” the Peterson Foundation said in a report earlier this month. “This year’s high interest bill isn’t a one-year phenomenon, it’s part of a trend that stretches out into the future, as debt continues to climb and relatively high interest rates push up the cost of federal borrowing.”
“Election years cannot be an exception for trying to prevent completely foreseeable dangers – and the debt is one of the major dangers we are facing,” MacGuineas said. “True fiscal responsibility cannot exist in a vacuum – if we want any hope of putting America back on course toward a sustainable and prosperous future, our leaders need to bridge rhetoric with action. Pay for your new spending; pay for your new or extended tax cuts; make deals, shake hands, pass budgets. In a word: govern.”
If only the politicians could stop the debt clock like they stop their own Biden stop-clocked brains, that if lucky are at least right twice a day, WE THE PEOPLE could go back to spending the majority of our tax dollars on productive palliative goods and services for THE PEOPLE, instead of interest payments on Chinese loans of money they first purloined from THE PEOPLE in unfair trade practices approved by bought politicians of BOTH parties, who enriched themselves by enslaving THE PEOPLE in debt to foreign interests for the coming next 3rd and 4th generations. There really ought to be a law, to prevent this lawlessness, and fines and jail sentences to the offenders, not like for THE PEOPLE whose finite ability to sustain such debt becomes an infinite opportunity for political crime families to infinitely prosper, by buying off the justice system that was designed to protect THE PEOPLE not the Criminals. Revolutions indeed are made from such things when they tell us to eat cake, while they get all the nourishing red meat for themselves. This time just vote your pocketbook and defund not the police but the politicians.
Destroying the country a trillion at a time !!
IF EVERY politician were INDIVIDUALLY FINANCIALLY responsible for PAYING ALL BILLS, by covering ANY OVERAGE ON legislation they pass, that CAN’T be covered by taxes, we’d never have this debt to begin with.
The gubment should be very worried and address this colossal debt burden. Instead they worry about TikTok and reform of the Supreme Court. Get your priorities straight SWAMP.
Fun facts: $35 trillion represents about $106,000 debt for every man, woman and child in the US, assuming about 330 million people in our country, and it’s probably much, much higher per person if we only consider tax-paying residents. Also, $35 trillion one dollar bills stacked on top of each other would extend nearly five round trips to the moon from Earth.
Mumble Bumbles has wasted 7.3 trillion dollars of our money. The National Debt was 27.7 trillion dollars when he took office on January 20, 2021 and now it is 35 trillion dollars. Is anyone going to do something about this or are we going to let it get worse?
WITH THESE hacks in congress, WORSE is the answer. NOT EVEN the republicans have any plans to fix it.
The Biden administration’s policies have been so devastating they have completely eclipsed the looming dept crisis. We are headed for a fall, and it will hit every American hard.