The U.S. national debt just passed an important milestone: it is now greater than $40 trillion That’s trillion with a “t.”
That number’s almost too big to contemplate. Most of us can imagine a million of something, though that’s a very large figure.
But a billion is 1,000 million. And a trillion is one thousand billion.
Wow. I believe in paying my bills when they’re due and don’t like to carry debt from month to month or year to year. That said, sometimes it’s necessary for a person, a couple, or even a country to be in debt.
When my husband and I were just starting out as a young couple, we had to go into debt to buy a house or a car, or to invest in higher education. It happens, and borrowing is sometimes a lifesaver.
As a country, the United States borrowed to finance our participation in World War II. And during the Great Depression, this country borrowed to provide relief for hurting individuals (through the Works Progress Administration, for example, the government program that made jobs available to people who otherwise would have had none).
Those were emergency situations. For the good of the country and its people, borrowing was an important tool to help us do what was essential.
Unfortunately, the country has sometimes borrowed for less sound, less defensible reasons. Both parties have been guilty at times of voting to charge costs of a desired program to the nation’s “credit card,” when those expenses might better have been deferred to a time when tax revenues would be ample to cover them.
The budget has been balanced some years, so we know it’s possible. During the Clinton years, for instance, a Republican-led Congress worked with that Democratic President to pull it off.
Joe Scarborough, who was then a member of the House representing Florida’s First District, often boasts of that feat on his TV program “Morning Joe.”
The truth behind that claim is somewhat different, though, in that “the elimination of the deficit was largely a temporary historical accident, driven by forces mostly beyond the control of the politicians who claimed credit for it” (Jessica Riedl, “How Did the Budget Get Balanced in the Late 1990s?” May 11, 2026, https://taxpolicycenter.org).
Mostly, the desired balanced budget resulted from two events: “the end of the Cold War and a temporary stock market and tax revenue bubble” (Riedl).
So balancing a budget is complicated, partly influenced by what our Congress and President do, partly controlled by current events.
The period from 1835 to 1837 (during Andrew Jackson’s administration) was “the only time in our history that the federal government has been debt-free” (Chris Edwards, “The Problems with Federal Government Debt,” October 1, 2015, https://www.cato.org/downsizinggovernment- essay).
Most years, deficits have gradually added to the national debt. It has been increasing for decades, but “much of the current total has been accumulated over the past ten years” (Chantelle Lee, “How Much the National Debt Grew Under Trump and Biden,” TIME, August 21, 2026).
A significant portion of the growth took place in response to the Covid pandemic, when the first Trump administration, then Biden’s, borrowed heavily to “fund the country’s pandemic response and recovery” (Lee).
The debt was just under $20 trillion when Trump became President in January 2017. When he left four years later, it had risen by about $7.8 trillion (Lee).
Under Biden, the debt grew by about $8.4 trillion (Lee).
So far in Trump’s second term, the debt has risen by more than $3.8 trillion, for a total of $11.6 trillion across the two Trump administrations (Lee).
(The Peter G. Peterson Foundation hosts a website where one can watch the national debt climb moment by moment: www.pgpf.org/ national-debt-clock. At one point while I was watching it recently, it hit $40,094,790,999,213. But before I could finish writing that figure down, thousands more had already been added.)
So does the amount of the national debt really matter? I’ve heard it argued that it doesn’t, since we “owe it to ourselves.”
But economists point out that, when more capital is used to finance government borrowing, that leaves less capital for private investment such as new businesses and new-home construction. Thus, it’s a drag on the economy (“Why the National Debt Matters More Than It Used to and Why We Should Not Count on AI to Fix the Problem,” June 23, 2026, www.ameri- canprogress.org/article/whythe- national-debt-mattersmore- than-it-used-to-andwhy- we-should-not-count-on-AI-to-fix-the-problem/).
Higher interest rates caused by government borrowing also hurt long-term investments “such as education funding, biomedical research, and other cutting-edge research and development” (www.americanprogress.org).
The effects of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” recently passed by Congress have yet to be fully realized, but we know that it cuts taxes for the wealthy while making health insurance for poorer people less affordable.
As noted in the American Progress article, “Being responsible means not hurting vulnerable Americans by cutting the services upon which they rely.” More pain for those least able to afford it promises to be one horrible legacy of the national debt’s ballooning. And we haven’t even seen the full cost of Trump’s lavish vanity projects, like that huge, fancy ballroom that nobody except him wanted.