On Monday, the United States national debt officially reached $33 trillion according to the Treasury Department’s data analysis.
The national debt continues to rise at unprecedented levels and the Treasury Department projects the government will run out of money if Congress doesn’t pass another bill by the end of September. Lawmakers are battling over the next budget or continuing resolution as Republicans see a major need to reduce spending and Democrats see higher taxes as the answer.
According to the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Maya MacGuineas said “The United States has hit a new milestone that no one will be proud of: our gross national debt just surpassed $33 trillion. Debt held by the public, meanwhile, recently surpassed $26 trillion. We are becoming numb to these huge numbers, but it doesn’t make them any less dangerous.”
Since Biden was inaugurated only a few years ago through the end of August 2023, the national debt increased more than $5 trillion. During that same time frame, the Trump administration saw the debt increase by $2.48 trillion and the Obama administration oversaw a $4.08 trillion increase.
In June, the bipartisan agreement reached was to temporarily suspend the debt ceiling for a two year time period and pledged to reduce the federal spending by $1.5 trillion over 10 years time. The agreement seems to have no teeth because the debt is projected to reach $50 trillion by the end of the decade.
House Republicans are fed up with the amount of crazy spending and over the weekend introduced a short term spending bill to fund the government but would reduce spending by 8% over all government agencies excluding the Pentagon, veterans programs and disaster relief, and would include measures to secure the southern border. Speaker McCarthy introduced the bill but the Democrats were completely against it.
The White House of course blamed Republicans for all national debt increases.
White House Spokesman Michael Kikukawa said, “The increase in debt over the last 20 years was overwhelmingly driven by the trillions spent on Republican tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and big corporations. Congressional Republicans want to double down on trickle-down by extending President Trump’s tax cuts and repealing President Biden’s corporate tax reforms.”
