The U.S. national debt is nearly $39 trillion. One of the country’s top fiscal economists says the real number is closer to $100 trillion — and that Washington’s own accounting rules are designed to hide it. (As this went to press, the national debt clock stood at $38.92 trillion, per Treasury data.)
According to Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model and one of the country’s most respected fiscal economists, that $39 trillion number is a polite fiction. The real tab, he argues, is closer to $100 trillion.
