United States national debt has surpassed $40 trillion for the first time, the Treasury Department confirmed on Wednesday, prompting fresh warnings of an impending fiscal crisis as rising costs for entitlement programs and interest payments outpace revenue constrained by tax cuts. The Treasury’s daily cash and debt statement showed total public debt outstanding at $40.047 trillion on Tuesday. That figure includes $32.266 trillion in Treasury securities held by the public and $7.782 trillion in intra-governmental debt holdings.
The federal government's total debt has more than doubled in less than a decade, rising from $19.95 trillion when President Donald Trump was sworn into office for the first time in January 2017. Roughly one-third of that growth occurred during two years of rapid borrowing to fund COVID-19 relief under Trump and former President Joe Biden, with the remainder driven by legislative policy choices and persistent tax-and-spending imbalances. Budget oversight organizations have anticipated the milestone for weeks, issuing urgent warnings that a major debt crisis could emerge unless Congress addresses the unsustainable trajectory by raising taxes, trimming spending, or both.
"Forty trillion dollars of debt doesn’t exist solely on the government’s ledgers; it is felt throughout the economy and finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "The more we borrow, the more we exacerbate inflation, squeeze out other priorities in the budget, and leave ourselves vulnerable to emergencies at home and turmoil abroad," MacGuineas said in a statement following the Treasury release. She noted that the $40 trillion mark arrived less than five months after debt touched $39 trillion, having quadrupled over the past two decades after taking until 1981 to reach $1 trillion.
"It is staggering how predictable the fiscal decline of a global power can become," MacGuineas added. Foreign creditors may already be showing hesitation. Days after a $25 billion sale of 30-year Treasury bonds cleared at the highest yield since 2021, yields on long-term bonds hit their highest levels in nearly two decades on Tuesday as investors sought greater returns to absorb heavy U.S. debt issuance.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took action to suppress long-term yields, announcing a doubling of buyback totals for 10- to 30-year Treasuries to at least $4 billion per operation. The term premium on 10-year Treasuries, reflecting the extra yield required for holding long-term debt, rose this week to its highest point in over twelve years. Meanwhile, appetite for U.S. debt among international investors, who hold nearly a third of all Treasuries, has receded over the past year.
That trend leaves a larger share of bonds to fall to price-sensitive buyers, potentially heightening market volatility, wrote John Canavan, lead financial market analyst at Oxford Economics' Macroeconomic and Investor Services group. The Treasury reported last week that the monthly deficit for July hit $432 billion—the fourth-largest in U.S. history—as tariff refunds pushed customs revenues negative for a third straight month while spending on Social Security and Medicare expanded. The cumulative deficit for the first 10 months of fiscal 2026 has already outstripped the full-year gap for fiscal 2025.
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