The eye-glazing milestone arrived without fanfare or protest in Washington’s political theater: the United States national debt officially crested to $40 trillion. To average Americans struggling with grocery bills and elevated interest rates, a figure with 12 zeros sounds like a problem for future generations. But fiscal gravity is already pulling down our economy.
Annual net interest on the debt will surpass$1 trillion this fiscal year, consuming more revenue than the entire national defense budget. We are paying vastly more for the exact same government services, burning hard-earned taxpayer dollars simply to service past political cowardice.
What makes this fiscal apocalypse
infuriating is the brazen hypocrisy of the Republican Party.
For decades, we conservatives built our brand on fiscal discipline, warning that unchecked deficits posed an existential threat to American prosperity. Having served as executive director of the House Republican Policy Committee, I listened to endless Capitol Hill speeches about balancing the ledger. Yet whenever handed the keys to governance, GOP lawmakers routinely treat the federal checkbook like a maxed-out credit card. MAGA echo chambers insist reckless spending is strictly a Democratic disease, but official government figures tell a damning, mathematically undeniable story.
The numbers tell a different story
To evaluate who actually owns this red ink, we must look at fiscal years governed by each president's enacted budget. An incoming administration inherits its predecessor's baseline for its first eight months, meaning a president’s true policy footprint begins with the fiscal year budget they sign. For Barack Obama, that covers fiscal years 2010 through 2017.
Donald Trump’s first-term budget legacy spans fiscal years 2018 through 2021, while Joe Biden’s covers fiscal years 2022 through 2025. Reviewing the accounting through this standard lens using officialCongressional Budget Office historical budget data, partisan excuses completely collapse.
Across eight budget years, President Obama oversaw $6.54 trillion in total deficits, averaging $817 billion annually, heavily front-loaded by the Great Recession. President Biden’s four fiscal years produced $6.68 trillion in deficits, averaging $1.67 trillion annually through massive spending packages. Combined, the 12 budget years under Obama and Biden produced $13.22 trillion in deficits.
Now look at Trump’s first term. Official reporting from the Congressional Budget Office Monthly Budget Review confirms that between fiscal years 2018 and 2021, federal deficits totaled an eye-watering $7.67 trillion with an average annual deficit of $1.92 trillion. Read those numbers again: Trump accumulated more total federal debt in four fiscal years ($7.67 trillion) than Obama did in eight ($6.54 trillion). Moreover, Trump’s annual average ($1.92 trillion) more than doubled Obama’s average and widely eclipsed Biden’s.
COVID-19 doesn't explain it away
Partisans attempt to blame Trump's fiscal wreckage on 2020 pandemic relief, but that is revisionist history. Long before COVID-19, Trump approved major spending increases alongside the 2017 tax cuts without making a meaningful reduction in federal outlays.
As documented in theCongressional Budget Office 10-Year Budget Outlook, annual deficits expanded every year of Trump’s initial presidency, rising from $665 billion in fiscal 2017 to nearly $1 trillion in fiscal 2019, during a period of broad economic expansion when revenues should have been reducing debt. If that’s not enough, COVID-19 was years ago. The current deficit for fiscal 2026, which ends Sept. 30, is nearly $1.8 trillion.
How’s that for Republican fiscal restraint?
Democrats don't have a fiscal answer either
Before Democrats get sanctimonious about their posture, progressives simply cannot raise taxes high enough to pay for their spending without wrecking the economy.
Left-wing politicians claim taxing ultra-wealthy Americans will magically eliminate our deficits, but the arithmetic fails.
According to IRS metrics analyzed inTax Foundation federal income tax data, the total aggregate taxable income reported by all 800-plus U.S. billionaires sits at roughly $250 billion annually. Taxing every single dollar of billionaire income at a 50% rate yields $125 billion – covering less than 7% of our $1.8 trillion annual deficit and funding federal operations for under seven days.
While Democrats peddle tax-the-rich fantasies, Republican "borrow and spend" governance is more deceptive because it offers voters an impossible free lunch. GOP leaders promise European-style outlays alongside sweeping tax cuts, pretending supply-side growth will balance the books.
This isn’t capitalism. It isn't the free market. It does, however, make self-described Democratic socialists look like cold-eyed accountants by comparison.
Real leadership requires the courage to align revenues with expenditures, reform mandatory entitlements and tell voters the hard truth. Until conservatives rediscover that grit, claims of fiscal responsibility remain nothing more than political lies written in red ink.
USA TODAY Network Tennessee columnist Cameron Smith is a Memphis-born, Brentwood-raised recovering political attorney who is raising four boys in Nolensville with his particularly patient wife, Justine. Send outrage or agreement to smith.david.cameron@gmail.com or @DCameronSmith on X. Agree or disagree? Send a letter to the editor at letters@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: America's $40 trillion debt exposes a conservative failure | Opinion
