The Biden administration’s ceaseless borrowing addiction has driven gross national debt past $31 trillion for the first time amid record inflation, rising interest rates, and fears of a looming recession.
The United States’ public debt closed at $31.1 trillion on Monday, according to Treasury Department data published Tuesday.
The milestone comes as the Federal Reserve continues to hike interest rates to fight the highest inflation in 40 years, and as the government borrows money to finance tax cuts even as it sends billions of taxpayer dollars offshore to Ukraine in aid.
“So many of the concerns we’ve had about our growing debt path are starting to show themselves as we both grow our debt and grow our rates of interest,” said Michael Peterson, chief executive officer of the Peterson Foundation, which promotes deficit reduction.
“Too many people were complacent about our debt path in part because rates were so low.”
It’s official. The #NationalDebt has now surpassed $31 trillion.
— Peterson Foundation (@pgpfoundation) October 4, 2022
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a U.S. federal agency that provides Congress with economic and budgetary analysis, has warned about America’s mounting debt load under the Biden administration, cautioning investors could lose confidence in the government’s ability to repay what it owes, as Breitbart News reported.
Those worries, the budget office said, could cause “interest rates to increase abruptly and inflation to spiral upward.”
The $31 trillion threshold poses a political problem for President Biden, who has pledged to seek a more sustainable fiscal path and reduce federal budget deficits by $1 trillion over a decade.
It also directly contradicts Biden’s claim in September, 2021 that his $3.5 trillion spending agenda actually cost “zero dollars” because of his sure, capable handling of taxpayer dollars.
“My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars,” a post from Biden’s Twitter account read.
My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars.
Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.
And it adds zero dollars to the national debt.
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 26, 2021
His message argued money was currently “wasted” on “tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion” and needed to be redistributed to American workers as directed by his office.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Biden’s debt addiction has added nearly $5 trillion to deficits since he took office.
That projection includes Biden’s signature $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill, a variety of new congressionally approved spending initiatives and a student-loan debt forgiveness plan that is expected to cost taxpayers nearly $400 billion over 30 years.
Think the catastrophic Biden economy can’t get any worse for everyday Americans? Think again. https://t.co/b6JS8gtFur
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) April 3, 2022
Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at Loyola Marymount University, told AP “it took this nation 200 years to pile up its first trillion dollars in national debt, and since the pandemic we have been adding at the rate of 1 trillion nearly every quarter.”
Predicting high inflation for the “foreseeable future,” he said, “when you increase government spending and money supply, you will pay the price later.”
