Nicole Littlefield (Daily Caller News Foundation) on September 19, 2023
The U.S. national debt reached $33 trillion for the first time on Monday, according to data published by the Treasury Department.
The Treasury Department noted the national debt hit $33.04 trillion on Monday afternoon, several months after the U.S. hit the debt ceiling in June, and Congress passed a bill suspending the ceiling until 2025. Lawmakers are currently attempting to prevent a government shutdown at the end of September as the national debt continues to rise.
“The United States has hit a new milestone that no one will be proud of: our gross national debt just surpassed $33 trillion,” Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told Fox Business. “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.”
The national debt increased more than $5 trillion since Biden was inaugurated to August 2023, which is more than the $2.48 trillion increase that occurred when President Donald Trump was in office and the $4.03 trillion increase during the Obama administration.
The debt debate in June concluded with bipartisan agreement to temporarily suspend the debt limit for two years and reduce federal spending by $1.5 trillion over the span of 10 years. Even with the agreement, the debt is still heading towards $50 trillion by the end of the decade, The New York Times reported.
House Republicans introduced a short-term proposal over the weekend that would reduce spending by roughly 8% for federal agencies, excluding the Pentagon, veterans programs and disaster relief, and would revive border initiatives introduced by the Trump administration. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy proposed the stopgap bill that would extend funding through Oct. 31, but Democrats opposed the bill, according to the NYT.
However, the White House blamed Republicans for the extreme increase in the national debt on Monday.
“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,” Michael Kikukawa, a White House spokesman, said in a statement to Fox. “Congressional Republicans want to double down on trickle-down by extending President Trump’s tax cuts and repealing President Biden’s corporate tax reforms.”
The Treasury Department and the White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
