US national debt surpasses $40 trillion

US national debt surpasses $40 trillion

Ben Werschkul · Washington Correspondent

Wed, August 19, 2026 at 1:45 PM PDT

The total US national debt surpassed $40 trillion this week, after adding $1 trillion in new debt to government balance sheets in just a few months.

The latest data from the US Treasury shows that, as of Aug. 18, the US government's "Total Public Debt Outstanding" is now at $40.047426 trillion and comes on the heels of new projections that the annual US deficit is projected to reach $2.1 trillion when the government's fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

The national debt has now more than doubled in less than a decade during the presidencies of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It has quadrupled in less than 20 years.

It's the latest grim milestone in the US fiscal picture after the debt held by the public surpassed the size of the entire US economy this spring. The US is firmly on pace to break the all-time record debt-to-GDP ratio set in 1946 after World War II.

"It took 192 years to reach our first $1 trillion, but only five months to go from $39 trillion to $40 trillion," Margaret Spellings of the Bipartisan Policy Center said.

The new Treasury data released on Wednesday also shows the government debt held by the public — a more conservative measure that removes what is known as intragovernmental holdings, or money the government owes itself — at a slightly lower but still historically high level of $32.265799 trillion.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the budget watchdogs at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, foresaw this latest milestone in a statement earlier this month, noting that government overspending in July alone had set a pace of $14 billion in new debt every single day.

"We are already feeling the consequences of this extreme borrowing — high interest rates, trillion-dollar interest payments, and looming trust fund insolvency that threatens benefits for Social Security and Medicare," MacGuineas wrote as she called for lawmakers to try to find a way to reduce deficits to 3% of GDP. (That figure currently stands at 5.8%.)

The Congressional Budget Office projects that without major policy changes, the ratio of federal debt held by the public to GDP will rise further to 120% in 2036 and to 175% by 2056.

The drivers of the debt

A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office outlined how the exploding debt and deficit aren't likely to reverse anytime soon, finding that government receipts grew 3% last year — failing to keep pace with spending that is up by 5%.

A core driver of the surging debt, the CBO noted, is increased spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare as the population ages, as well as interest payments on the debt itself.

Interest on the national debt has grown sharply, exceeding defense spending in 2024, and now makes up 15% of all US government spending. Put another way, more than 1 in 7 dollars spent by the federal government goes to servicing the debt.

The root causes stretch back decades, across both Democratic and Republican administrations, with promises from both parties to get it under control. President Trump has often said his policies — especially tariffs — would eliminate deficits and long-term debt, but both have increased under his watch.

Tariff revenues have even turned negative in recent months as court-ordered refunds have outpaced collections.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently tried to sidestep the Trump administration's responsibility for the problem, saying in a television appearance this month that "we inherited a mess" from former President Joe Biden.

He claimed progress toward paying down debt even as the total public debt has grown from about $36.2 trillion on the day Trump was inaugurated in 2025 to the current $40 trillion milestone about 19 months later.