(The Center Square) – The national debt continues to rise at a breakneck pace, with Americans bearing a greater and greater debt burden.
The national debt is over $36 trillion, currently on pace to surpass $37 trillion later this year.
According to the Peterson Foundation, the debt amounts to a national debt burden of more than $106,000 per person.
In December 2023, The Center Square reported the national debt burden had surpassed $100,000 per person. In just over one year, that debt burden has grown by 6% per person, an alarming rate for budget experts.
The national debt is on track to hit 172% of GDP by 2054, according to the Peterson Foundation.
At the end of the World War II borrowing spree, the national debt was 100% of GDP.
The U.S. Congressional Budget Office released new projections earlier this month, estimating that federal deficits will hit $22 trillion over the next 10 years unless drastic cuts are made.
CBO also projected that the cost of interest payments alone on the national debt will rise to 4.1% of GDP by 2035, well beyond the current record.
The CBO has projected that the federal deficit will hit $2.5 trillion annually by 2035. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, deficits never topped $1 trillion. Since then, and under the Biden administration, deficits have repeatedly been over or just under $2 trillion.
“The United States has built a dangerous mountain of debt quite simply because our political leaders are unwilling to do the hard work of governing responsibly and acting as fiscal stewards for the country,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said after the CBO numbers were released.
“They choose to borrow at record levels rather than acknowledging that part of budgeting is having a plan to pay the bills and despite the incredible damage they continue to inflict on the country as the debt grows,” she continued. “As today’s report shows: our debt is at near-record levels only seen just after WWII, we will spend more on interest than any other program other than Social Security, and Social Security will become insolvent in less than a decade.”
The Peterson Foundation tracks the national debt and its burden on individual Americans and pointed out that the federal government spends $1.8 billion on interest every day.
“Similar to a home or car loan, interest payments represent the price we pay to borrow money. As we borrow more and more, federal interest costs rise and compound,” the group reports. “Rapidly growing interest payments are a burden that hinders our future economy.”
