The United States’ national debt crossed $40 trillion last month. Five months earlier, in March, the more consequential figure—debt held by the public as a share of Gross Domestic Product—had already hit 100% for the first time since just after World War II.
That threshold arrived at the tail end of an extraordinary run: every president who has occupied the Oval Office since 2001, save Joe Biden, was born a baby boomer, and boomers held a majority of Senate seats as recently as the 118th Congress. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the nonpartisan think tank that serves as a fierce budget hawk, issued a blog post retroactively looking at how we got here over the past quarter-century. What’s left unsaid is who was in power over that period, and the answer is overwhelmingly: boomers.
