#USDebt36Trillion The National Debt Just Hit $36 Trillion. Does Trump Have a Plan To Control It? (opinion)

In last week's elections, Americans rejected the status quo in the federal government and asked Republicans to once again take the reins.

On Friday, the Treasury Department issued another reminder about the cost of doing nothing to change course. The national debt hit $36 trillion—less than four months after surpassing the $35 trillion mark.

Evenly divided, that means every American is now six figures in the red, thanks to the decisions made in Washington, D.C., over the past few decades. The trajectory ahead looks no better. The federal government is on pace to run multitrillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future—and that's the rosy scenario, which assumes no recessions, wars, pandemics, and the like. Measured against the size of the U.S. economy, the debt is approaching the record high set in the final year of World War II. The rising debt means higher annual interest payments that will complicate the federal budget, likely require higher taxes, and make everyone poorer.

Trump is saying a few of the right things—and one of his first actions as president-elect was to task Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with promoting government efficiency, which may or may not translate into spending cuts.

"It's time for significant changes to our spending habits, and that won't be accomplished with another reckless and lazy [continuing resolution]," Rep. Andy Biggs (R–Ariz.) posted on X soon after the news about the national debt hitting $36 trillion broke. Biggs, like some of his allies in the House GOP, has been pushing for Congress to actually complete a full budget, something that legislators have not done since 1996.

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), who has pushed for spending cuts without much success in recent years, wrote in a letter to his Senate colleagues on Thursday that he is "gravely concerned about the fiscal health of our nation and the growing federal debt."#USDebt36Trillion $BTC