The U.S. national debt surpassed $32 trillion for the first time on Thursday, according to Treasury Department data released today.
The milestone comes less than two weeks after President Joe Biden signed into law the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, his compromise with Republicans led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to trim spending by a projected $1.5 trillion over a decade and suspend the nation’s debt limit until January 2025.
Total public debt outstanding — which includes debt held by the public as well as that held by federal trust funds and other government accounts — reached $30 trillion for the first time in early 2022 and then hit $31 trillion less than nine months ago. As of the end of day Thursday, the debt stood at $32,039,244.
“The $32 trillion mark arrived nine years sooner than prepandemic forecasts had projected, reflecting the trillions of dollars of emergency spending to address Covid-19’s impact along with a run of sluggish economic growth,” Alan Rappeport of The New York Times notes. “Republicans and Democrats have expressed concern about the nation’s debt, but neither party has shown an appetite to tackle its biggest drivers, such as spending on Social Security and Medicare.”
Fiscal hawks are urging lawmakers to build on the deficit-cutting momentum of the Biden-McCarthy deal. “We can’t even get through a single fiscal year anymore without adding a trillion dollars in debt, and $33 trillion is likely just around the corner,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that advocates for deficit reduction. “We need a return to responsible fiscal policy if we’re ever going to get ourselves out of this mess. The formula to get there should be simple: no new borrowing – meaning fully offset all new spending or tax cuts – and better yet, hold off on them until our debt is under control; address the drivers of our runaway debt; and reform our broken budget process. It’s not rocket science.”
