Ep. 29 - What the $40 Trillion National Debt Actually Costs You | Everyone Knows

On August 18 the national debt of the United States passed $40 trillion. It took two hundred years to borrow the first one. The last one took five months.

America Owes $40 Trillion | Everyone Knows Ep. 29

Everyone Knows | Episode 29 | Starborne Studios

The Treasury publishes what this government owes every business day, and on August 18 it came in at forty trillion dollars and change. Fox Business ran it. So did NPR and the AP. Left, right and center, same figure, because it is not a projection. It is a bank balance. Nobody disputes the number. Every fight you hear about it is over whose fault it is. Brian Bullock skips that fight and goes after the part nobody explains.

Three parts. All of them matter.

FIRST, who we actually owe this money to. Most people picture China holding the paper. Wrong. The largest share sits with American pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and retirees holding Treasury bonds. Back in March the debt held by the public passed the size of the whole American economy, which has not happened since 1946, when we were paying off the Second World War. This time we did it in peacetime. Washington takes in about five trillion a year and spends about seven. It borrows about six billion dollars a day, and over half of that is interest on debt we already have. Foreign aid, the thing everybody names first when asked what to cut, is under one percent.

SECOND, what the interest is doing to you. Net interest now runs about a trillion dollars a year, more than this country spends on its entire national defense. Every ship, every plane, every base, every paycheck, and the finance charge is bigger. Every other dollar in that budget buys something. Interest buys nothing. It is up more than a hundred and fifty percent since 2019, and it reaches your kitchen table, because when Washington borrows two trillion a year it stands in the same line you do for a mortgage. Then there is the receipt. All three credit rating agencies have marked this country down, including one that held us at the top since 1917. All three gave the same reason, and it was not a war or a recession.

THIRD, the part that should make you angry. Everybody says nobody has ever tried to fix this. Not true. They have tried, over and over, across forty years, and there is a pattern in how each one died. There is also one stretch in living memory when this country balanced its books four years running, and the reason it worked is not what either party tells you. Brian lays out what got broken, who benefits from keeping it that way, and the two questions to put to any politician who claims to be serious about the debt.

Both parties built this. Neither one will own it. If you're tired of the spin, you're in the right place.

ABOUT EVERYONE KNOWS: Everyone Knows is an independent podcast hosted by Brian Bullock — author, storyteller, and founder of Starborne Studios. Every episode breaks down the stories that matter using one simple framework — who benefits, who gets hurt, why now, and what happens next. No cable news theatrics. No party line. Just a straight read on what's actually going on and what it means for regular people. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you don't miss one.

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