National Debt Passes New Grim Milestone
One week before Thanksgiving, the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding surpassed $36 trillion for the first time ever.
Just 118 days earlier, the politicians and bureaucrats running the U.S. government breached the $35 trillion mark for the national debt. That was 204 days after they managed to top $34 trillion. The U.S. government passed each of these grim fiscal milestones during 2024.
What makes that a dubious achievement is that the U.S. government has collected a record amount of tax revenue in 2024. The federal government’s tax collections beat the previous record set in 2022 when the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic boosted the Treasury’s coffers.
Unlike 2020 or 2021, there is no national emergency in 2024, like a pandemic, to cause the national debt to rise so fast. Yet, in 2024, the politicians and bureaucrats running the U.S. government are borrowing to fund their spending as if there was an emergency.
How fast is the U.S. government borrowing money?
The chart below shows how fast the national debt increased per day to surpass each of its last $30 trillion worth of trillion-dollar milestones. The data comes from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Debt to the Penny resource, which has daily national debt figures going back to April 1, 1993.
This data shows how extraordinary the period containing the coronavirus pandemic was. However, the important thing to recognize is that the pandemic surge in debt ended. The daily national debt growth rate went back to pre-pandemic levels in 2022. By the time President Biden signed legislation officially ending the national emergency to respond to the pandemic on April 11, 2023, the pandemic had been effectively over for months.
But instead of staying low, the daily growth rate of the national debt surged after that date to levels not seen outside of fiscal crises or national emergencies. The politicians and bureaucrats running the federal government got a taste of what it was like to spend without restraint, and they didn’t give it up.
In 2024, it took them 322 days to run the national debt up by $2 trillion. It is clear the politicians and bureaucrats running the federal government aren’t paying any attention to the national debt milestones they’re passing. How soon will it be before they blow past the $37 trillion milestone?
