alt.hn

3/19/2026 at 5:07:17 PM

US national debt surges past $39 Trillion

 https://apnews.com/article/us-national-deficit-hits-39-million-6ff73495bae701b5c009d3da5515ca3a

by Betelbuddy

3/19/2026 at 5:25:47 PM

The Democratic party would do well if they rebranded as socially progressive and fiscally conservative.

by cj

3/19/2026 at 6:09:35 PM

In the current world a rock would do fine in an election,

- Won't start a war

- Won't speak like a 5yo kid

- Won't run around and desert you

by dietr1ch

3/19/2026 at 8:36:58 PM

30% of the people who voted in the last election fully agree with trump and his Iran war, his policies, and his pardons.

by orwin

3/19/2026 at 7:45:13 PM

I'm basically at the point I'm voting for Vermin Supreme this time.

by wormius

3/19/2026 at 9:07:48 PM

...as you should, because if you don't, the wrong lizard might be in charge!

by disqard

3/19/2026 at 5:27:48 PM

that electorate doesnt exist in two party system.

by trgn

3/19/2026 at 5:31:28 PM

Agreed, unfortunately. The amount of people that actually care about the national debt is near zero in reality, despite many stating otherwise.

When their party of choice comes into power, it's always "spend, spend, spend" - how else do you do all the things you want to do while in power? Then the table turns and they pretend to care while the other party takes a turn.

Round and round we go, deeper and deeper in debt, spending like a there's no tomorrow.

by Alupis

3/19/2026 at 5:47:15 PM

This is only possible because the taxation is obfuscated through debt or inflation, both of which effectively are a tax but a less obvious one allowing duping of the populace.

We don't need a new party necessarily, just a constitutional amendment that the government can only spend money from direct tax proceeds, with no pre-emptive withholding.

by mothballed

3/19/2026 at 5:44:10 PM

Well said. It’s the game theoretic outcome of a system where vote splitting gives the other team a default win. Single choice voting sucks.

by gorgoiler

3/19/2026 at 5:31:02 PM

It can.

by mattmaroon

3/19/2026 at 5:42:43 PM

how so? Alupis explains the mechanism why not. In two party system, new electives are incentivized to achieve their program. Reducing spending hinders that, and loss of those voters who care about that betrayal doesn't really matter because they're a tiny group anyway, and realistically, where are they going to go, the other party? They have the same incentive, just for different program. That's the cycle.

by trgn

3/19/2026 at 6:07:22 PM

Sure but the bigger debt gets, and the more negative impact it has on the population, the bigger that group gets. It’s not big enough yet but that doesn't mean it can’t be. We’ve seen such tipping points with other issues.

by mattmaroon

3/19/2026 at 6:21:49 PM

i like your optimism!

by trgn

3/19/2026 at 7:35:21 PM

Oh I didn't say I was optimistic, just that it is possible. And it is inevitable but probably won't happen until much too late.

by mattmaroon

3/19/2026 at 5:32:39 PM

That's basically Bernie Sanders modus operandus. Burlington was running budget surpluses when he was in charge.

It's not hard, you just have to make rich people pay taxes. This is an enormously popular idea.

by kevmo

3/19/2026 at 5:40:02 PM

Enormously popular doesn’t mean right.

You should tax behaviours you want to disincentivise.

Taxing smoking, cars and sugar are great (but not always popular) ideas.

Taxing second homes, property ownership for companies, foreign owned property, and so on is much more important than taxing unrealised wealth, inheritance or capital gains and income.

Wealthy people find loopholes, and so you end up taxing the middle class and limiting social mobility with those initiatives.

We should figure out what they do with their wealth that makes it worthwhile amassing so much, then tax that.

EDIT: sorry, I should have echo’d the chamber instead of thinking about a situation critically.

by dijit

3/19/2026 at 7:19:56 PM

The wealthy find loopholes because they are often the people having the legislation drafted. It’s actually not hard to pass clear solid tax laws. It’s only hard to get it passed.

by scoofy

3/19/2026 at 5:47:13 PM

I want to disincentivise people with wealth using it to corrupt systems of power into doing what they want.

> Wealthy people find loopholes, and so you end up taxing the middle class and limiting social mobility with those initiatives.

Sounds like we should get rid of these wealthy people then...

by SimianSci

3/19/2026 at 5:55:12 PM

Let me know when you find a way that makes sense.

I’m a socialist, but I have a brain.

Anything you can think of to make wealthy people cease to exist is easily bypassed, so the best way is to find ways to tax behaviour instead.

The point of money is how you use it, if you have a 50,000x tax on super yacts and private aircraft, then the ultra rich are forced to pay your tax or try skirting around it by using smaller boats or coalescing their private jets into a private airline.

But if you tax stocks, then people will invest in other ways. If you tax individuals owning large property then they’ll move their property ownership into a company, if you tax inheritance then they’ll put the money into a fund instead which has debts that will be written off in time. All kinds of fancy tricky accounting.

The other solution is to tax everyone on unrealised gains, which makes every home owner (including pensioners) suddenly liable for huge ongoing bills.

Elon himself for example is pretty cash poor, but owns a lot of stock in a “high value” company meaning his wealth on paper is pretty extreme. He takes on debt (which has no income tax) and then pays it off with stocks, where it also avoids being taxed as its never realised.

I think its a harder problem than you give it credit.

by dijit

3/19/2026 at 6:43:14 PM

How would it work if we treated money obtained by borrowing against stock holdings as "realized gains"? That seems like a loophole that could be closed.

by eszed

3/19/2026 at 6:44:56 PM

whats the difference with a mortgage then, a securities backed loan.

by dijit

3/19/2026 at 8:30:14 PM

Well nothing, I think what is being proposed is to trigger existing capital gains taxes when an asset is borrowed against, the same as if it were sold. Most places exempt personal homes from capital gains taxes already, so it wouldn’t affect them. It would affect

- someone who bought an investment property, which then appreciated, and then they wanted to take out a larger mortgage against the appreciated value to leverage it into buying another property.

- Someone borrowing against stock to avoid realising gains by selling it

That seems… reasonable to me?

by heisenzombie

3/19/2026 at 10:30:46 PM

Thank you. Yes, that's precisely what I mean. I've floated the same idea a few times on this forum and others. I've asked, but have yet to see someone point out a systemic downside. (I'm not any kind of financial sophisticate, so I'm well aware that I might be missing something!) In fact, it seems to me that having people finance their lifestyles by borrowing against assets adds a degree of leverage risk to the system, and ought to be discouraged just on that basis.

by eszed

3/19/2026 at 5:45:47 PM

I think we should want to disincentivize any person from having too much power and wealth is power.

by throwawaysleep

3/19/2026 at 5:36:27 PM

Enormously popular for the electorate, not so much for the people that count, donors.

by cogman10

3/19/2026 at 8:34:44 PM

Tax the rich all you want, you won't raise enough money to balance the budget, let alone pay for all the additional spending that Sanders et al. wants.

by Acrobatic_Road

3/20/2026 at 3:57:18 PM

It would certainly help. And how does that additional spending compare to the defense budget, or the cost of going to war?

by konmok

3/19/2026 at 5:35:47 PM

Correction: one party with two factions.

by lo_zamoyski

3/19/2026 at 5:36:23 PM

It would be an easy strategy to defeat - the two biggest Democratic states, California and New York, are close to the top in terms of cost of living. I know fiscally conservative doesn't mean "cheap to live" but most people see them as the same.

by jerlam

3/19/2026 at 5:41:16 PM

In a way it's just Maslow's pyramid, no? People who can't get housing, or good enough housing, don't care much about the image of the US abroad and may even support foreign aggression if they believe it'll help their situation.

Only once you're very secure and comfy in your little corner does "your image abroad" even have any meaning at all.

by spwa4

3/19/2026 at 5:43:37 PM

Expensive places are where people care the most about that though.

by throwawaysleep

3/19/2026 at 5:39:57 PM

Fiscally uncorrupted.

We have a high cost of living but we also have the highest taxes. Up to 10% depending on where you live. In return for that we get next to nothing. Public money is spent poorly, with no oversight, and no accountability.

by themafia

3/19/2026 at 5:35:29 PM

If you look at national debt, the Democratic Party is the fiscally conservative party. Yet you believe the opposite. Propaganda works!

by lowbloodsugar

3/19/2026 at 5:35:14 PM

Fiscal conservatism is a lie, Republicans have consistently contributed far more to the debt than Democrats, at least during my lifetime.

by babypuncher

3/19/2026 at 5:39:11 PM

I rarely hear Republicans actually call themselves fiscally conservative.

It seems more like an abandoned stance than a lie at this point.

by Retric

3/19/2026 at 6:39:35 PM

Well, you occasionally hear some chest thumping from Republicans about being “deficit hawks”. Fairly sure they all voted for the latest tax cuts.

by 0cf8612b2e1e

3/20/2026 at 12:43:27 AM

Because raising taxes was never part of their deficit reduction strategy. Not that it matters, being fiscally conservative was never an honestly held belief but simply a campaign slogan.

by cosmicgadget

3/20/2026 at 4:56:16 AM

Did you somehow miss the marketing spiel (propaganda) for DOGE??

by tastyface

3/19/2026 at 6:08:58 PM

> socially progressive and fiscally conservative

How about “socially progressive and fiscally effective”?

by mcphage

3/19/2026 at 5:40:35 PM

The Republican policy has been to starve the beast for 40 years. They are willing to bury the country in unsustainable levels of debt in order to force their agenda for government because they can't reach their goal electorally. They care more about that goal than the financial health of the nation or what the impacts of destroying the financial health is on all of us. They would rather intentionally make us too broke to function so that we can't afford government than have us rich but with a functional government. This has been their publicly stated policy for 40 years.

by _DeadFred_

3/19/2026 at 5:49:11 PM

The Republican party is wholly a party for the Rich and wealthy. All other claims to the contrary are attempts to deceive people that this is not the case.

by SimianSci

3/19/2026 at 5:38:02 PM

Isn't that what it already is?

by triceratops

3/19/2026 at 5:39:15 PM

Would that not require them to ... support fiscally conservative actions, which would lose them a large part of their voting bloc?

by dmitrygr

3/19/2026 at 5:41:16 PM

In recent history (last few decades) the scoreboard shows them already being more fiscally conservative than the only viable alternative.

by genthree

3/19/2026 at 5:48:19 PM

I understand that claim. I will not even argue against it. But, as you pointed out - there are two options only, so they must be evaluated against each other. Ds would need to go quite a bit further in the direction of being fiscally conservative to justify overlooking their other issues (in the eyes of R voters) in order to capture significant voter counts from the R side.

"How tasty would the beer need to be to justify the burned rancid steak, to make this diner better than the other one?" -- basically

by dmitrygr

3/19/2026 at 5:36:09 PM

Is this not theoretically the libertarian party? (Of course in reality it’s often the Republican-lite party). It hasn’t proven to be a winning strategy

by Macha

3/20/2026 at 1:19:22 AM

No, democrats and libertarians differ on the role of government in preventing businesses from acting unethically, firearms regulation, and age of consent.

by cosmicgadget

3/19/2026 at 5:45:11 PM

The Libertarian Party is solely focused on reducing the liabilities side of the balance sheet in the interest of reducing the income side by lowering taxes. Try showing up to to a libertarian convention with "give me some money to invest in a program that will benefit our whole society" and see how far you get.

by InitialLastName

3/19/2026 at 5:33:46 PM

Rebranding does not fix rot.

See also: X, Meta, Blackwater…

by 6stringmerc

3/19/2026 at 5:44:28 PM

The media environment is so right wing (yes really) that Democrats don't get the credit for that kind of thing while Republicans don't get the blame for absolute ransacking of the country.

by guelo

3/19/2026 at 5:34:49 PM

Fiscal conservatism only exists as an ideology when paired with hurting brown people. It does not exist as a meaningful political camp otherwise.

There is a reason that fiscal conservatives spend all their time on food stamps, environmental regulations, and a few random research projects and not even examining any of the top four costs that make up the overwhelming bulk of US spending.

by throwawaysleep

3/19/2026 at 5:39:05 PM

To be fair they usually want to reduce the benefit of Social Security and Medicare, because they're "unsustainable", while tax cuts and defecit spending is apparently sustainable.

by projektfu

3/19/2026 at 5:32:40 PM

This is basically how the Democratic party is trying to operate now and it's not working. They've been trying to cater to moderate Republicans who became disillusioned with Trump and it's gotten them very little in the last decade.

by CodingJeebus

3/19/2026 at 5:36:12 PM

I know gp said that they would "do well," but maybe the party should do what's right regardless of how much it's gotten them in the last decade.

by tines

3/19/2026 at 5:37:24 PM

In politics, power is everything. You do not matter without power.

by throwawaysleep

3/19/2026 at 6:53:09 PM

A party that has no power has no impact

by CodingJeebus

3/19/2026 at 9:16:01 PM

Maybe they have no power because they have no principles.

by tines

3/19/2026 at 5:51:37 PM

Government debt gets resolved eventually through inflation. There's never a point where we have to "pay it all back" and get the debt down to zero. We just end up paying of a $1 loan with a dollar that's worth only 50c.

So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us. Inflation is a form of taxation on currency. It's less like credit card debt and more like wage garnishing.

It's also worth pointing out that young people are less affected by inflation than old - retirees and people with savings. Inflation is good for people in debt. So it's not so much your children you have to worry about with today's debt level so much as it is yourself.

by legitster

3/19/2026 at 8:00:34 PM

> So there's never a particular point that it "comes back to bite us" - if anything, the "bite" is happening already right now for all of us.

This is magical thinking. The bonds are actually held by investors, and when investors see them as a losing bet, they will stop buying them. Unless you think American taxpayers will suddenly be willing to live within our means, it’s a real problem.

The current reserve currency status means that people often use the bonds for reasons other than returns, but we need to not fool ourselves into assuming this paradigm is permanent. Once real inflation gets going, it’s just a coordination problem to change the reserve instrument. After that, the intersection between what the US can feasibly return and what investors require can quickly evaporate.

We are currently on a Japanese trajectory, but that could easily become Argentina.

by scoofy

3/19/2026 at 8:57:34 PM

> The bonds are actually held by investors, and when investors see them as a losing bet, they will stop buying them

largest investor will be or already a Fed, and it will continue buying if there is political will.

by andriy_koval

3/19/2026 at 9:15:16 PM

Again... when the only purchaser becomes the central bank, then you're effectively printing money. Since no one is bearing the cost of actually buying the bonds, and there is no profit motive, then you're ultimately just printing the deficit every year. This is already quite high, and is compounded by the knowledge that outstanding liabilities of the nation basically dwarf the current debt.

If that is the plan, then hyper-inflation is not only on the table, it starts to become probable. I shouldn't have to explain why that's a problem. There isn't a free lunch here. Yes, inflating the debt away is an option... to a point, but there are still hard limits on what the market will bear.

by scoofy

3/19/2026 at 9:26:37 PM

> Since no one is bearing the cost of actually buying the bonds, and there is no profit motive, then you're ultimately just printing the deficit every year.

sure, there are plenty of countries in the world who just print money without all these debt ritual.

> to a point, but there are still hard limits on what the market will bear.

this niche (government prints money to fund its expenses) is not part of any market, but just policy supported by monopoly on violence.

by andriy_koval

3/19/2026 at 9:31:48 PM

My point is the vast majority of citizens don’t actually want to become poorer over time with zero incentive to save or invest.

by scoofy

3/19/2026 at 9:35:48 PM

Your point is very superficial. People in power know that majority of citizens don't want to become poorer, so they created sophisticated infrastructure of political parties, financial transactions, methods of policing, which extracts wealth from citizens, but citizens don't know how exactly and what to do about this. Debt and all fed thing is one of components.

by andriy_koval

3/19/2026 at 9:46:39 PM

If you’re suggesting that the electorate is not generally in control of fiscal policy then it’s safe to say this conversation is over. We can agree to disagree on the structure of the American government.

by scoofy

3/19/2026 at 11:04:09 PM

The majority of citizens may not be following all this closely, but they're not stupid. They can feel when they're becoming poorer, and they don't like it. They blame the president when it happens, even if they can't explain exactly why.

But what the Republicans might be able to do is spend like drunken sailors, and have the crisis happen when the Democrats are in power after 2028. People blame the current president, whether or not he had much of a chance to do anything about it.

by AnimalMuppet

3/19/2026 at 11:10:11 PM

both parties abuse debt in favor of protecting interests of rich: Biden and Obama added 8T each.

by andriy_koval

3/19/2026 at 6:00:21 PM

> Government debt gets resolved through inflation.

This is misleading.

US debt as GDP percentage is higher than for any other nation except Italy and Greece, and was much lower historically, too (<50%ish for basically the last century instead of >100% now).

So the status quo is not how government spending gets typically resolved.

Racking up public debt risks runaway inflation, which is unpleasant for everyone.

by myrmidon

3/19/2026 at 6:06:39 PM

Comparing a currency issuer like the US to currency users like Italy and Greece is a category error. You can compare Alaska to Greece or California to Italy. But you should compare the US to other currency issuers - like the Eurozone, Japan or the UK.

by neilwilson

3/19/2026 at 6:19:43 PM

Euro area is slightly under 90%, doing a bit worse than EU average (80%ish).

Japan is much higher-- I did not have that in my dataset, appears to be at 230% debt but decreasing pretty rapidly (down from almost 260% in 2020).

by myrmidon

3/19/2026 at 8:19:12 PM

This sounds like pretty dangerous thinking to me. A government financial crisis is something that happens slowly and then very quickly. The US currently enjoys extremely low borrowing rates and still spends a significant portion of its tax receipts servicing debt. If the country starts to appear much less stable and reliable in the long term those rates can increase sharply, which would put gigantic strain on the country's finances, which would cause rates to jump even more. It's a bad cycle that we very much want to avoid.

Even without any disaster scenarios we spend an immense amount of money every year on debt payments. That money could instead be spent on any number of other use cases that actually produce something useful.

by rurp

3/19/2026 at 8:55:30 PM

> If the country starts to appear much less stable and reliable in the long term those rates can increase sharply,

but its US who decides which rates it uses to borrow from itself.

I see its just some process to do all this inflation thing in US, while I imagine various other countries just print the money causing inflation and don't go through debt ceiling approval voting.

by andriy_koval

3/19/2026 at 6:04:45 PM

It’s rather more simple than that. In a floating exchange rate world, which is the one we live in a dollar is just a 0% bearer bond.

So when a government bond matures it is replaced automatically with a simple bank deposit. It’s nothing more than an asset swap.

“People with savings” are precisely why there is a “debt” in the first place. When they spend those savings they pass tax points which then creates the tax that retires the “debt”.

To put it in simple terms the “grandchildren” will “service the debt” using the counterparty “savings assets”inherited from their “grandparents”.

Don’t fall for the standard narrative. It’s not true.

by neilwilson

3/19/2026 at 8:38:56 PM

We won't be able to inflate our way out of the debt because government spending is tied to inflation.

by Acrobatic_Road

3/19/2026 at 5:50:20 PM

As GDP percentage, only two countries are higher: Italy and Greece (edit: and Japan).

Public debt is a significant political talking point in both cases (and even in Germany, with a much lower debt percentage).

The current US administration (and the last republicans in general) did an excellent job in pretending to be the ones fighting public debt when they are actually exacerbating it; I'm curious if there is gonna be a reckoning at some point.

by myrmidon

3/19/2026 at 5:54:11 PM

That can't be right as Japan's Debt-To-GDP Ratio is almost double the US's.

by legitster

3/19/2026 at 6:07:53 PM

You are absolutely right. I did not realize that my dataset was missing most of Asia/Africa. Japan ist at ~230%, but interestingly decreasing pretty quickly (decreased their debth from almost 260% GDP in 2020).

I have sadly no idea how much focus this gets in japanese politics, would be very curious if anyone knows.

by myrmidon

3/19/2026 at 5:33:56 PM

So at what point does us bond ratings go down and cost of borrowing becomes problematic?

I know us is buyoed by the petrodollar, but surely that only goes so far.

by bawolff

3/19/2026 at 6:20:22 PM

There's a LOT of nuance in any answer to this but the short of it is: we've already been downgraded by all the major agencies over the last 15 years, despite this - the market doesn't really seem to care. Partly because while our actual debt # is high - we're also giga rich, leaving us around #10 for debt-to-GDP right next to Italy, Canada, and France. Furthermore, the gap between places to ~#8-#20 is pretty small so its even less severe in practice. These numbers will shift a little bit based on which estimates you look at, but the spirit shouldn't change. So, its not a major issue today but it could become one if spending continues to accelerate.

by claythearc

3/19/2026 at 5:35:56 PM

> The Government Accountability Office outlines some of the impact of rising government debt on Americans

Well, we found another agency that won't last much longer in this administration...

by rconti

3/19/2026 at 5:47:47 PM

The GAO is part of the legislative branch, not the executive. Makes that quite a bit harder.

by ceejayoz

3/19/2026 at 5:48:27 PM

GAO and CBO are under Congress directly, fortunately.

They're both awesome. Anyone who starts talking about all kinds of obvious ways to cut waste in government and isn't dropping references to GAO and CBO reports all over the place, is almost certainly bullshitting you (glares at Elon Musk).

The GOP has hated them for quite a while because they consistently tell them that no, of fucking course cutting taxes won't "pay for itself", but they haven't yet had the votes to get rid of them. Trump can't, they're some of the few government functions that fall under Congress (possible because they don't really administer government, they just issue reports, largely on request, so they're more like research librarians than administrators)

by genthree

3/19/2026 at 5:46:42 PM

Surprised they didn't axe them first just based on the name.

by daveguy

3/20/2026 at 3:01:33 AM

I will never forget, and neither should you, that the last time we had a budget surplus, instead of doing _anything_ useful with it, the Republicans decided the best thing to do was to send everyone a check in the mail.

Among the useful suggestions of what to do with it, besides pay down the debt: Keep a slush fund in case of an unexpected war. (This was a few weeks before 9/11.)

by StoneAndSky

3/19/2026 at 5:28:37 PM

Compounding working the way it always does. This won’t stop until it breaks.

by christophilus

3/19/2026 at 5:47:07 PM

This is a good time to share this article again:

Isn’t it Time to Stop Calling it “The National Debt”? - https://evonomics.com/isnt-time-stop-calling-national-debt/

by spankalee

3/19/2026 at 7:15:32 PM

I already don't understand the beginning of the article:

> Imagine you’re the queen or king of a sovereign country. You decide to mint and issue a bunch of tin coins that your people will find useful. You use those coins to buy stuff from people in the private sector, and pay them to do work. Voilà, the people have money.

This describes how you create money. People give work and the government gives money. But that isn't what national debt is? That would be when the people give money to the government and don't get work in return, but the promise to pay more money back. This then means that some amount of taxes can't go back to things the government wants to give back to the people, but needs to go to the interest holders instead.

Given that I already don't understand the intro, the whole article sounds like nonsense to me. What am I missing?

by 1718627440

3/19/2026 at 6:05:50 PM

For some context: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

That chart doesn't include WWII, which might be the only time that comes close.

by xnx

3/19/2026 at 6:08:33 PM

Bill Clinton v2 was the best small government Republican president we had in awhile.

by mothballed

3/19/2026 at 6:07:33 PM

Apparently the debt is keeping the Fed from raising interest rates as much as they did in 1979 when a similar crisis happened. Raising interest rates would increase the debt servicing costs pushing the US into a debt crisis.

by impure

3/19/2026 at 11:19:18 PM

Where we are now is nothing like where we were in 1979. Inflation was something like 14%. Interest rates hit 20%. Yeah, I know that the last few years were painful after 15 years of ZIRP, but it's not at all the same.

by AnimalMuppet

3/19/2026 at 5:43:16 PM

I'm sort of surprised to see this on the HN front page. Typically the US national debt is only a mainstream topic of discourse when there isn't a Republican in office.

by wnevets

3/19/2026 at 5:27:04 PM

Trump has added $4T to the debt in one year:

From https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/d...

3/19/2025 $36,214,467,819,348.16. --> 3/17/2026 $39,016,762,910,245.14

Yet strangely all Republicans are silent

by outside2344

3/19/2026 at 5:42:22 PM

Republicans just play whatever meta will win them power until they get into office. It's a time-honored tradition at this point, so any time they tell you what they believe, what they say their beliefs are and what they actually do, will often be two separate things.

by SimianSci

3/20/2026 at 1:25:23 AM

They're not allowed to voice criticism.

by cosmicgadget

3/19/2026 at 5:49:37 PM

Shhh, you don't shout at the money hose, you just keeeeeeep drinking!!!!!!

by LightBug1

3/19/2026 at 5:37:09 PM

Republicans are only deficit hawks when it comes to spending money on things every day people benefit from. If they actually gave even a single shit about the deficit, they wouldn't hand billionaires massive tax breaks every single time they take power.

by babypuncher

3/19/2026 at 6:03:06 PM

Reagan campaigned against Carter’s profligate spending.

by CalChris

3/19/2026 at 9:24:51 PM

It really is like our body politic is still mentally stuck in 1980. It's crazy. Republicans still campaign on "balancing the budget" while demonstrably being responsible for all the major explosions of debt we have experienced in our lifetime.

The whole thing is absurd.

by scoofy

3/19/2026 at 6:34:02 PM

And then blew up the deficit and started our massive accumulation of debt. A pattern gleefully followed by every single Republican administration since. Every single Democratic administration since has reduced the deficit the "spend and give tax breaks" Republicans have run up. But it's a losing battle clearly.

by tstrimple

3/19/2026 at 6:40:56 PM

Carter reduced the deficit as well until the recession hit in 1979 and tax revenues decreased.

by CalChris

3/19/2026 at 6:14:42 PM

And then proceeded to blow up the deficit even more himself. What they campaign on and what they actually do are different things.

by babypuncher

3/19/2026 at 5:28:51 PM

Are those numbers backwards or am I seeing things?

by mc32

3/19/2026 at 5:30:25 PM

Sorry, copy and paste error. I copied the public debt number for 2026 instead of the total debt number. Fixed.

by outside2344

3/19/2026 at 5:25:22 PM

What's $200 billion more gonna hurt :')

by kylehotchkiss

3/19/2026 at 5:27:29 PM

But only for war not for social benefits, that would be irresponsible spending

by croes

3/19/2026 at 6:07:46 PM

Defense spending is social spending just unequally distributed.

by CalChris

3/19/2026 at 5:34:55 PM

The accounting for the current conflict is far from straight forward. The money was largely already allocated to military things, and there's fixed constants of payroll, food, fuel, munitions etc that would be spent regardless on training, operations, readiness, and just existing.

The media doesn't differentiate these things to deliberately inflate the figures.

by Alupis

3/19/2026 at 5:54:05 PM

So what do you think the cost of the war is, then? $50bn? Seems like splitting hairs or missing the point. Even $50bn is too much for a war that congress nor the American people approved.

by spacemark

3/19/2026 at 6:04:07 PM

When's the last time Congress approved of a war? How about the American people? Maybe that first six months of Afghanistan? Maybe...

The President doesn't need approval for military action, and hasn't for decades. In a not so subtle way, we elect Presidents to make decisive decisions, such as when to engage in a conflict.

And to address your question, the cost is probably neutral so far. We'll need to replace many of the munitions, but we do that anyway. The loss of life is probably the most costly aspect of this conflict thus far.

by Alupis

3/19/2026 at 9:20:04 PM

The cost of the war is zero? You're off your rocker.

The constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war and authorize military force. The fact that our country's politicians have manipulated our system to the point that this has been disregarded basically since WWII should never be normalized.

This country has been run by the rich for a very long time and democracy is on its way out.

by spacemark

3/19/2026 at 9:05:26 PM

Every missile fired has to be replaced.

by mrguyorama

3/19/2026 at 6:11:37 PM

Them why has Hegseth ask for another $200 billions?

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/19/hegseth-iran-war-budget.html

by croes

3/19/2026 at 6:29:39 PM

> House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., responding to a CNBC question Thursday, said he has “not heard anything official from anybody” on the $200 billion number. But he said the figure could also include things that would otherwise be sought in the fiscal 2027 spending bill.

> Hassett, speaking on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” said at that time that he did not think the U.S. needed to ask Congress for more money for the war effort “right now.”

> The massive figure would increase production of the critical munitions that the U.S. and Israel have used to strike thousands of targets since the conflict began, three other people familiar with the matter told the Post.

> U.S. military operations against Iran, which began Feb. 28, have already cost $12 billion as of Sunday, according to Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council.

And a reminder, the $12B figure includes all of the normal things that would be spent regardless if we are in a conflict or not.

by Alupis

3/19/2026 at 6:42:38 PM

What leads you to believe $12B includes normal things that would be spent regardless? The source of that quote makes no such claim. They have every incentive to quote as low a price as they can reasonably defend, and it would be very easy to defend a quote that only includes new and additional expenses that are directly attributed to the war.

by robhlt

3/19/2026 at 7:14:31 PM

The $12B figure[1] is almost exclusively munitions used so far. The US didn't buy munitions and use them, they already had them.

The cost reports (updated as the conflict goes on) will also include payroll, fuel, food, supplies, etc. Everything needed to conduct the war - but much of that is already spent even if not at war.

[1] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kevin-hassett-national-economic...

by Alupis

3/19/2026 at 8:03:41 PM

Have you seen the price of crab legs lately?

by antod

3/19/2026 at 5:30:36 PM

In war you don't have immigrants lining up for FREE HAND OUTS etc etc

by westmeal

3/19/2026 at 6:43:41 PM

No, during war you have refugees doing that. But where are these immigrants looking for free handouts? All the ones coming here are looking for work.

by baggachipz

3/19/2026 at 5:36:47 PM

Well, as long as you bomb countries on the other side of the world. Someone else (the long suffering US allies) can deal with all the displaced peoples then.

by phatfish

3/19/2026 at 5:36:01 PM

One might argue that this war is a free hand-out to foreign interests.

by InitialLastName

3/19/2026 at 6:09:00 PM

Those immigrants who do all those low paid jobs and who paid billions of taxes without the benefits?

Schrödinger‘s immigrant, doesn’t work and takes American jobs

by croes

3/19/2026 at 9:18:27 PM

Guys this was sarcasm btw

by westmeal

3/19/2026 at 5:25:15 PM

Economists often say that the national debt isn't analogous to consumer debt, because the US has a number of means to address it that the average consumer does not have, including the ability to print money.

And while that's true ... perhaps we as citizens and taxpayers would be better off ignoring that technicality and treating this debt as more like consumer debt.

Eventually, it's going to come back to bite us or our children, and we need to be willing to make some hard choices now to avoid having to make even harder choices later.

by jawns

3/19/2026 at 5:34:50 PM

I used to think that way, but now I don't believe that the debt ever needs to be repaid by anyone's children. The public sector debt is basically just a record of net private sector liquid assets, and repaying it would amount to the private sector losing all of its liquidity, or having to replace it with private debt instead. That's basically what happened throughout the roaring '20s preceding the Great Depression, and I don't think it really ends up being a good move.

by mitthrowaway2

3/19/2026 at 5:50:14 PM

Surely at some point compounding interest will eclipse this, no? If our debt is 500 trillion does your opinion hold?

by spacemark

3/19/2026 at 7:37:28 PM

Yes, it's independent of the absolute level of debt. A 500 trillion dollar debt means the private sector is proportionately awash in 500 trillion of liquid assets. This will be reflected in a proportionately high (dollar-denominated) GDP, tax revenue, and consumer price level (absent any big changes in population or productivity).

Of course, to get from 40 trillion to 500 trillion would mean that prices are basically 12x higher, which would mean a lot of inflation will have happened in the meantime. So it would be very bad if the government debt increased by that much in the timespan of one year, because it would basically mean hyperinflation over that span of time. But if that same growth in the debt happened over 400 years, it would be no big deal.

So the relative rate of growth of the government debt certainly matters, because that influences inflation, which is the thing that actually causes problems. Not the size of the debt itself. That is, if G is outstanding government debt, then the figure that matters for inflation is approximately (1/G) dG/dt. But not the absolute level of the government debt G itself.

This also means that compounding interest doesn't really affect the calculation. As the debt grows larger, and the interest payments grow larger, directly in proportion to the size of the debt, and therefore the economy as a whole -- they don't outgrow it. Assuming a steady and reasonable interest rate, at least. If the interest rate were super high or growing without bound, then yes, that would be a problem for the government debt. But that would be a pretty weird thing to happen and wouldn't happen just because the debt figure itself hit some large value, but probably instead because of a currency crisis (eg. the country owes debts to other countries in currencies it does not control).

I'm trying to think of a good way to put this. A person can run out of water and die of thirst, but when you zoom out to bigger and bigger scales, the Earth itself doesn't run out of water; it just goes around in a cycle. Economists have a saying that "one man's expenses are another man's income". For a single household, that doesn't really feel true; the rest of the economy is so big that expenses bascially just disappear from your bank account, and you don't notice any of the money that leaves your pocket when you hire a plumber come back to you, even though some tiny amount actually does when that plumber buys food from your restaurant. So we individuals also can have the experience of debts growing big enough to bankrupt us as the interest payments exceed our income. But governments live on the same scale of economies as a whole, and for them, the recirculation of the money they spend really can't be removed from the analysis.

by mitthrowaway2

3/19/2026 at 9:26:32 PM

Where do you get this idea that our national debt = private liquid assets? How does that make any sense at all?

This kind of intellectual rationalization about something that is obviously not healthy is why people distrust so called experts.

In your analogy, people are dying of thirst, but it's ok because the whole world isn't losing water. Mmmkay.

by spacemark

3/20/2026 at 1:02:04 AM

It comes directly from the math of double entry bookkeeping.

In my analogy, individual people do need to take care to ensure they don't run out of water. But you don't need to worry that if it rains a lot this year, there won't be any rain left for your children.

by mitthrowaway2

3/19/2026 at 5:59:20 PM

I don't see such a clear benefit to eliminating the debt, actually I see a lot of downsides that would likely be worse for our children. The way I understand it, the primary concern is whether the debt is growing faster than the economy can support and whether we're using it for productive purposes or not. A government isn't like a household: treasury debt also functions as a safe asset, a tool of monetary policy, and a store of value for pensions, banks, and investors around the world, a majority of the debt is also a domestic asset. Trying to eliminate the debt would likely mean austerity and major tax increases, which can be more damaging the debt itself.

I don't think people realize that a large share of the government's debt is also a domestic asset. It is still something to be wary of and manage carefully but it is not something that I think is wise to eliminate either. The main concern should be making sure it is being used productively and is not exceeding what the growth of the economy can support (which happens when its used unproductively).

by OGWhales

3/19/2026 at 5:34:22 PM

not just eventually. Its coming back to bite you now and for the last 10 years and the next 10 years. if you sell a house (and you're past the 500K exemption), or any kind of equities or gold, you're going to be a world of pain. Most of the "capital gains" aren't gains at all, it's just devaluation of the dollar. Let's say dollar devaluation is roughly 7% per year, that means you're paying 2% to 2.5% of your houses value every year in "capital gains" tax. sure, you don't pay it until you sell, but rest assured, it's accumulating. so 2M house means 40K to 50K per year! and if you think i'm overstating the 7%, just look at the case shiller housing index for the last 10 to 15 years!

and if you're holding cash or bonds, you're even worse off. even if the dollar is devaluing at just 7% per year, that's a 50% loss in just 10 years and that compounds to 75% loss after 20 years.

by leaves83829

3/19/2026 at 5:51:17 PM

This would not be a good idea. Government "debt" expands the money supply, and if government spending gets us infrastructure and social services.

The only big issue here is the interest, which we force ourselves to pay by requiring the issuing of bonds in the first place, and is a big transfer of tax payer money to the large bond-holders.

by spankalee

3/19/2026 at 5:33:16 PM

At some point it becomes better option just to take the money you get paid back and instead of loaning it out again buy something... Anything else really... And then it gets worse.

by Ekaros

3/19/2026 at 5:27:23 PM

Ah yes, the "we can cure debt by going into hyperinflation" argument

by wagwang

3/19/2026 at 5:34:26 PM

It's something that the US could uniquely do without going into hyperinflation due to it's status as a reserve currency.

That all, of course, changes if other countries decide they've had enough of our shit and switch over to different reserve currencies like BRICS. And, of course, printing currency to get out of debt is something that would make countries consider dumping the dollar as a reserve currency.

by cogman10

3/19/2026 at 6:03:00 PM

you think we can print 40t without going into hyperinflation? Lol... Why would other countries hold usd if we print 40t

by wagwang

3/19/2026 at 6:20:50 PM

We don't need to print the entire debt.

How it'd likely start is we print to cover a shortfall in debt. Maybe it's 500B, maybe it's 1T.

And we could do that for a bit before entering hyperinflation.

Hyperinflation would start when the TBill rate ends up exploding because people start pricing in dollar printing into the bond rates.

And, as I said, it would be something that would cause countries to start looking at ditching the dollar.

It's not great fiscal policy, but it is something that the US can currently uniquely do and enjoy without the absolute risk of hyperinflation.

by cogman10

3/19/2026 at 5:51:07 PM

How that's ole' DOGE horseshit coming along?

Are you feeling those tremendous efficiency gains yet?

by LightBug1

3/19/2026 at 5:36:45 PM

Uh oh. Looks like we're gonna have to cut spending on science, regulation, infrastructure and social programs even more.

by krapp

3/19/2026 at 5:36:42 PM

thats roughly $100 grand per head

by pestatije

3/19/2026 at 5:43:28 PM

It's a good job Elon Musk and his friends sacked all those governement workers, otherwise it would have been $39.0000001 trillion.

by drcongo

3/19/2026 at 6:05:37 PM

If Elon Musk hadn't sacked those government workers it would probably be less than 39 trillion as he had to pay termination packages and hire back people he accidentally fired.

by impure

3/19/2026 at 7:36:08 PM

> hire back people he accidentally fired

much worse in reality, many have been replaced by government contractors we are paying 2.5/3x more

by bdangubic

3/19/2026 at 5:23:47 PM

[dead]

by Helloworldboy

3/19/2026 at 5:33:06 PM

…add on another $1T for the student loans that will never be repaid. Those aren’t counted? There’s a shocker. Mr. Market lost his Marker up his ass a long time ago y’all. Plan accordingly.

by 6stringmerc

3/19/2026 at 5:26:53 PM

It's just a number.

by baal80spam

3/19/2026 at 5:46:25 PM

Basically yes. Well apart when it comes to our wages and credit we get. At least if we are responsible and try to pay it back.

But everything else is just numbers. Stock markets, commodities, gambling, collectibles. real estate... Everything...

by Ekaros

3/19/2026 at 7:06:10 PM

That represents the amount of work (part of the GDP) the state has promised to perform for outside entities.

by 1718627440

3/19/2026 at 5:45:43 PM

Kinda funny how in some 4 year periods these sorts of headlines are treated as existential crises, whereas in other 4 year periods they are not.

by jghn