The United States national debt crossed $39 trillion for the first time Tuesday, arriving at the grim milestone less than five months after it first hit $38 trillion in late October—a pace of accumulation that budget watchdogs and academic economists are now calling, with unusual unanimity, “unsustainable.”
The milestone, confirmed in Wednesday’s Daily Treasury Statement, lands amid a politically charged moment: it comes roughly two weeks before the ten-year anniversary of President Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to eliminate the national debt within eight years. Instead, the gross national debt has roughly doubled since Trump first took office—it was $19.9 trillion in January 2017.
