In last week’s elections, Americans rejected the status quo in the federal government and asked Republicans to once again take the reins.
On Friday, the Treasury Department issued another reminder about the cost of doing nothing to change course. The national debt hit $36 trillion—less than four months after surpassing the $35 trillion mark.
Evenly divided, that means every American is now six figures in the red, thanks to the decisions made in Washington, D.C., over the past few decades. The trajectory ahead looks no better. The federal government is on pace to run multitrillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future—and that’s the rosy scenario, which assumes no recessions, wars, pandemics, and the like. Measured against the size of the U.S. economy, the debt is approaching the record high set in the final year of World War II. The rising debt means higher annual interest payments that will complicate the federal budget, likely require higher taxes, and make everyone poorer.
There is plenty of blame for this mess. Yes, former President Donald Trump added $8 trillion to the debt during his four years in office. Yes, President Joe Biden has done nearly as much damage—despite a bunch of disingenuous and memory-holed talk about curbing deficits during his first two years.
What’s more important is what will happen next. The American people made a clear choice in the election. Trump and his fellow Republicans will have full control of the federal budget for at least the next two years. Can they break the recent trends and, at minimum, slow the growth of the national debt?
Skepticism is warranted. In recent history, divided government has been the only hope for spending restraint. Meanwhile, the promises Trump made on the campaign trail will translate into higher spending, larger deficits, and more debt, according to assessments by independent groups such as the Penn Wharton Budget Model. Trump dodged questions about the debt while campaigning and does not have a plan to cut spending, even though he’s promised lots of tax cuts (a recipe for higher deficits and more borrowing).
If Trump’s second term is to be less fiscally reckless than his first, he may have to abandon some of his most ambitious plans, like a mass deportation proposal that has “no price tag,” in Trump’s estimation.
Still, Trump is saying a few of the right things—and one of his first actions as president-elect was to task Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with promoting government efficiency, which may or may not translate into spending cuts.
At least some Republicans in Congress also see the need for fiscal restraint.
“It’s time for significant changes to our spending habits, and that won’t be accomplished with another reckless and lazy [continuing resolution],” Rep. Andy Biggs (R–Ariz.) posted on X soon after the news about the national debt hitting $36 trillion broke. Biggs, like some of his allies in the House GOP, has been pushing for Congress to actually complete a full budget, something that legislators have not done since 1996.
Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), who has pushed for spending cuts without much success in recent years, wrote in a letter to his Senate colleagues on Thursday that he is “gravely concerned about the fiscal health of our nation and the growing federal debt.”
The goal for the next two years should be merely stabilizing the growth of the debt. That alone will require a massive effort. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that it would take nearly $8 trillion of budget cuts (spread across the 10-year budget window used by the Congressional Budget Office and other official estimates) to keep the debt from growing faster than the economy over the long term.
That is the task that voters have set before Republicans, who have full control of the agenda for at least the next two years. Really, the ultimate responsibility lies with Trump, given that so much of the GOP is now beholden to his whims. Crossing the $36 trillion threshold so close to Trump’s decisive win in the election provides a convenient baseline for measuring his second term in office. Four years from now, how high will that number be?
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