The U.S. government’s gross national debt has surpassed $37 trillion, a record that highlights the accelerating debt on America’s balance sheet and rising cost pressures on taxpayers.
The $37-trillion figure is in the latest Treasury Department report issued Tuesday, which logs the nation’s daily finances.
The national debt eclipsed $37 trillion years sooner than pre-pandemic projections. The Congressional Budget Office’s January 2020 outlook had gross federal debt topping $37 trillion after fiscal year 2030. But the debt grew faster than expected because of the multi-year Covid pandemic that began in 2020 and shut down much of the U.S. economy. The federal government borrowed heavily under then-president Donald Trump and former president Joe Biden to stabilize the economy and support a recovery.
More government spending has since been approved, including Republicans’ tax cut and spending legislation signed into law by Trump earlier this year. The law is set to add $4.1 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Michael Peterson, chair and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said in a statement that government borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates, “adding costs for everyone and reducing private sector investment. Within the federal budget, the debt crowds out important priorities and creates a damaging cycle of more borrowing, more interest costs and even more borrowing.”
Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, said Congress plays a major role in setting spending and revenue policy. She added that the result of the Republicans’ tax law “means that we’re going to borrow a lot over the course of 2026, we’re going to borrow a lot over the course of 2027 and it’s just going to keep going.”
The Government Accountability Office has outlined the impacts of rising government debt on Americans — including higher borrowing costs for mortgages and cars, lower wages as businesses have less money to invest and more expensive goods and services.
Peterson noted that trillion-dollar milestones are “piling up at a rapid rate.” The U.S. hit $34 trillion in debt in January 2024, $35 trillion in July 2024 and $36 trillion in November 2024.
“We are now adding a trillion more to the national debt every five months,” Peterson said. “That’s more than twice as fast as the average rate over the last 25 years.”
The Joint Economic Committee estimates that at the current daily rate of growth, the debt will grow by another trillion dollars in about 173 days.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement that “hopefully this milestone is enough to wake up policymakers to the reality that we need to do something, and we need to do it quickly.”