National debt jumps to $22 trillion – By Pete Kasperowicz (Washington Examiner) / Feb 12 2019
The U.S. national debt hit $22 trillion for the first time this week, less than a year after it first hit $21 trillion.
Total government debt was $22.013 trillion on Monday, according to the Treasury Department. The exact level of debt for any given day is published on the following business day.
The debt has now climbed more than $2 trillion in less than 18 months. It first hit $20 trillion in September 2017. Just a few months ago, Trump called on his Cabinet officials to cut their budgets by 5 percent in a bid to keep spending down.
“Our growing national debt matters because it threatens the economic future of every American,” said Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. “As we borrow trillion after trillion, interest costs will weigh on our economy and make it harder to fund important investments for our future. We already pay an average of $1 billion every day in interest on the debt, and will spend a staggering $7 trillion in interest costs over the next decade.”
“With deficits rising, and gross debt scheduled to increase by more than $1 trillion annually forever into the future, now is the time Congress must take action to put us on a more sustainable path,” said the Campaign to Fix the Debt. “The fiscal recklessness over past years has been shocking, with few willing to step up with a real plan. We need responsible leadership to fix the debt, not a worsening of partisanship.”
The federal budget deficit, a major factor in the growth of the national debt, has been below $1 trillion per year for the last few years. But other factors, such as federal student loan programs and mortgage programs, have allowed the debt to climb faster than $1 trillion per year.
The Congressional Budget Office this week projected that the budget deficit for the current fiscal year, 2019, will be nearly $900 billion.
The federal government is currently free to borrow as much as it wants to fund whatever level of spending Congress approves. However, the debt ceiling will snap back into place on March 1.
At that point, the debt ceiling will be whatever level of debt the government has incurred, and borrowing above that level won’t be allowed.
The last several times the debt ceiling was reached, Congress got around the problem by suspending it, which allowed more borrowing.
Total national debt is made up of two components. The larger piece, debt held by the public, is now more than $16 trillion.
The smaller piece, intragovernment holdings, is approaching $6 trillion and represents money the government has borrowed from other government programs.
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