The national debt is on the cusp of a grim milestone, but it’s one of the least discussed topics at the Republican National Convention this week.
President Joe Biden hasn’t mentioned it much either as he has campaigned across the country.
Outstanding government debt stood at $34.9 trillion ($34,940,154,000,000 to be somewhat more precise) as of Tuesday, according to the latest data from the Treasury Department.
That’s a debt load that now represents over 120% of GDP. Earlier this year, the cost of interest payments alone passed the cost of defense spending.
The psychologically important $35 trillion milestone will likely be crossed sometime between this week’s Republican National Convention and when the Democrats gather in a few weeks’ time in Chicago — if debt continues to grow by an average of about $8 billion a day.
All told, the debt could represent 166% of America’s GDP by 2054.
Yet a Yahoo Finance review of this week’s flood of…
