US national debt tops $32 trillion for first time

The gross national debt exceeded $32 trillion for the first time on Friday, underscoring the country’s unsettling fiscal trajectory as Washington gears up for another fight over government spending, Report informs via the New York Times.

A Treasury Department report noted the milestone weeks after Congress agreed to suspend the nation’s statutory debt limit, ending a monthslong standoff.

The $32 trillion mark arrived nine years sooner than prepandemic forecasts had projected, reflecting the trillions of dollars of emergency spending to address Covid-19’s impact along with a run of sluggish economic growth.

Republicans and Democrats have expressed concern about the nation’s debt, but neither party has shown an appetite to tackle its biggest drivers, such as spending on Social Security and Medicare.

The recent bipartisan agreement suspending the debt limit for two years cuts federal spending by $1.5 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by essentially freezing some funding that had been projected to increase next year and then limiting spending to 1 percent growth in 2025. But the debt is on track to top $50 trillion by the end of the decade even after newly passed spending cuts are taken into account.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said during the standoff in May that spending cuts proposed by lawmakers failed to address the costs of social safety net programs. While avoiding a default would prevent an immediate crisis, he said, the ballooning debt is a persistent problem that needs to be addressed.