Milestone marks years of government spending that grew under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden

US debt reached $40tn for the first time on Wednesday, the US treasury department said, after the government deficit doubled over the last decade.

The treasury’s latest debt balance showed $40.047tn on Tuesday afternoon, the highest in US history.

The milestone marks years of government spending that grew under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. During his first term, Trump approved $8.4tn worth of debt, with a huge chunk going to Covid-19 relief spending, while Biden approved $4.3tn worth of debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    The entire notion that an entity, which holds the exclusive monopoly on the supply of the currency its budget is denominated in, can in any way be considered to be exposed to debt in that currency which can be framed a problematic is, at best, farcical.

    That ‘national debt’ is merely the tally of the legitimate quantity of the currency in existence. If it’s too much, they hold the equal monopoly of removing it through taxation, and the easiest and most effective point to do that is where it its concentration has accumulated the most.