US debt surpasses $31 trillion
The US national debt has officially exceeded $31 trillion for the first time in history, the Treasury Department confirmed on Tuesday.
The US government owed a total of 31 trillion, 123 billion, 887 million, 781 thousand, 401 dollars and 34 cents as of October 3, according to publicly released Treasury figures.
At the moment of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, in January 2021, the debt stood at $27,75 trillion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
“It was $21 trillion just five years ago,” Congressman Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, lamented on Twitter after the news broke.
The national debt stood at $19.94 trillion when President Donald Trump took office in 2017, and exploded in the past few years as the Federal Reserve printed money to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Most of the debt is held by private individuals, to the tune of $24 trillion, while debts to foreign governments amount to almost $7 trillion. Much of the world indirectly subsidizes the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
Meanwhile, the featured announcement on Treasury’s website on Tuesday concerned the establishment of a 25-member Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, which is supposed to “provide advice and recommendations to Secretary Yellen and Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo on efforts to advance racial equity in the economy and address acute disparities for communities of color.”
