GOVERNMENT & POWER • GOVERNMENT DEBT & SPENDING
On Tuesday the U.S. national debt crossed $40 trillion. You saw the headline. But the headline doesn’t tell you what actually matters. The United States hit its first trillion in debt in 1981. It had taken 192 years — every war, every recession, every president from Washington to Reagan — to get there. The last trillion? March 17 to August 18. A hundred and fifty-four days. The debt is now growing at roughly $6.5 billion a day, and every man, woman, and child in America now carries $117,000 of it… whether they know it or not.
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The first trillion took 192 years — the last one took 154 days.
