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.
It sort of depends on what you mean by defaulting on loans. That could mean a few bonds are late being paid out or that whole interest payments are missed.
Regardless a default would risk things like (even more) rampant inflation or skyrocketing interest rates and even in the best case scenarios would likely make it very expensive to borrow money going forward.