{"id":53338,"date":"2026-08-20T08:41:48","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T02:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=53338"},"modified":"2026-08-20T08:41:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T02:56:48","slug":"us-debt-crosses-40-trillion-threshold-after-doubling-under-trump-and-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/us-debt-crosses-40-trillion-threshold-after-doubling-under-trump-and-biden\/","title":{"rendered":"US debt crosses $40 trillion threshold after doubling under Trump and Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Reuters<\/strong> : Total U.S. debt has topped $40 trillion for the first time, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday, drawing fresh warnings that a fiscal crisis is \u200bbrewing as ballooning costs for social safety-net programs and interest payments far outstrip revenues held back by tax cuts.<\/p>\n

The Treasury’s latest daily cash and debt balances statement showed total public debt outstanding at $40.047 trillion on \u200cTuesday, a total that includes Treasury securities held by the public of $32.266 trillion and intra-governmental debt holdings of $7.782 trillion.The federal government’s IOU has now more than doubled in less than a decade, from $19.95 trillion when President Donald Trump was sworn in for the first time in January 2017.<\/p>\n

Roughly one-third of that increase occurred during two years of frantic government borrowing to fund the COVID-19 pandemic responses undertaken by Trump and former President Joe Biden, while the fiscal policy choices of both presidents combined with long-running tax-and-spending imbalances account for the rest.<\/p>\n

Budget watchdog groups have anticipated crossing the threshold \u200bfor weeks and issued stark warnings that a full-blown debt crisis could erupt unless lawmakers confront an unsustainable fiscal outlook and raise taxes, cut spending or both.”Forty trillion dollars of debt doesn\u2019t exist solely on the government\u2019s ledgers; \u200bit is felt throughout the economy and finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible \u2060Federal Budget.<\/p>\n

“The more we borrow, the more we exacerbate inflation, squeeze out other priorities in the budget, and leave ourselves vulnerable to emergencies at home and turmoil abroad,” MacGuineas said in a statement just after the Treasury data was released.<\/p>\n

She said the $40 \u200btrillion figure was reached less than five months after debt reached $39 trillion, and has quadrupled in less than 20 years after taking until 1981 to reach $1 trillion for the first time.
\n“It is staggering how predictable the fiscal decline of a global power \u200bcan become,” MacGuineas added.Global U.S. creditors may already be growing wary, with demand from foreign investors holding nearly one third of Treasuries declining over the past year.<\/p>\n

Days after a $25-billion auction of 30-year Treasury bonds went off at the highest yield since 2021, yields on so-called long bonds on Tuesday hit their highest levels in nearly two decades as investors demanded greater compensation in the face of hefty U.S. government bond issuance. Yields move inversely to bond prices.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took a bold step to push long bond yields back down, announcing a doubling of buyback sizes \u200bfor 10- to 30-year Treasuries to at least $4 billion per operation.<\/p>\n

Higher Treasury yields at the longer end tend to push up interest rates for mortgages, car and commercial loans. With the mountain of debt showing no signs of abating, Trump on Wednesday \u200brepeated his frequent demand for lower rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters : Total U.S. debt has topped $40 trillion for the first time, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday, drawing fresh warnings that a fiscal crisis is \u200bbrewing as ballooning costs for social safety-net programs and interest payments far outstrip revenues held back by tax cuts. The Treasury’s latest daily cash and debt balances statement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53338"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53339,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53338\/revisions\/53339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}