It took 200 years for national debt to hit $1 trillion. Annual interest alone now exceeds that—a ‘crushing legacy we must reverse,’ says budget chair

The U.S.’s eye-watering debt burden poses an “existential threat to the future of our nation,” the chairman of the House Budget Committee has warned, as the country’s borrowing figure tipped over $39 trillion.

Texan Republican Jodey Arrington highlighted last week that it had taken the U.S. nearly two centuries to build a debt pile worth $1 trillion, whereas a mere matter of decades later, the Treasury is forking out that figure every year merely in service payments on the debt.

For the fiscal year 2025, the Treasury paid $1.22 trillion in interest on the debt, and for FY2026, the government has already paid out $520 billion. By 2036, that figure is expected to hit to $2.1 trillion annually, according to calculations by the Congressional Budget Office.

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Indeed, U.S. debt didn’t reach the $1 trillion mark until the early 1980s, hitting $1.1 trillion under President Ronald Reagan.

As Arrington points out: “It took roughly 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion. Now we add that in a matter of months. Every child in America today carries a $530,000 share of this debt—a crushing legacy we must reverse. Compounding the problem, we now spend more than $1 trillion a year just on interest to service our debt—more than the entire defense budget and triple the amount when Biden took office.”

Arrington isn’t alone in his concern over the nation’s financial trajectory. Figures on the private side of the economy like Jamie Dimon and Ray Dalio have warned over a reckoning caused by debt, and U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has also expressed the need for an “adult conversation” about the issue.

There is a range of opinions on which methods should be employed to wrangle borrowing and its associated interest costs. For example, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has advocated for a federal unified budget deficit at or below 3% of GDP, which at the moment sits at around 6%. This idea has been backed by the likes of Representatives Bill Huizenga and Scott Peters, the co-chairs of the Bipartisan Fiscal Forum—indeed, the entire steering committee for the forum has backed the notion and introduced a resolution to that effect.

Arrington has called for a harder-line approach. The resolution for a deficit of 3% of GDP is defined more loosely as a target: Arrington wants to open up a conversation about adding fiscal responsibility to the country’s very constitution.

He said last week: “Here’s the sad, sobering, and stunning truth: despite the urgency of our fiscal crisis, Congress is paralyzed—unable to meet the urgency of the moment. So, if Washington won’t act, then it’s time to look beyond our nation’s capital. The Founders gave us another path in Article V of the Constitution, empowering the states and the American people to step in and demand fiscal discipline.

“I’m calling on Congress to convene an Article V Convention. It’s time to restore sanity in our nation’s capital and reverse the curse looming large over this country.”

An Article Five Convention allows amendments to the Constitution, for example, targeting borrowing and government spending. If two-thirds of state legislatures apply, then Congress must call a convention, with a further three-quarters of states required to back the amendment for it to become a legal requirement.

Other approaches

In recent memory, presidents have attempted to rectify the U.S. fiscal position. President Obama oversaw the creation of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, commonly known as the Simpson-Bowles (or Bowles-Simpson) Commission. The ensuing report made several recommendations: Cutting discretionary spending, reforming tax law, and reshaping healthcare spending.

President Trump has suggested some unusual methods to rebalance the books. For example, he has touted a “Gold Card” plan, a visa policy which would charge rich immigrants $5 million for a green card, plus a route to citizenship.”

“A million cards would be worth $5 trillion, and if you sell 10 million of the cards that’s a total of $50 trillion. Well, we have $35 trillion in debt, so that would be nice,” Trump said last year.

Likewise, tariffs were introduced as a way to offset some of the revenue loss from the likes of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Indeed, while Trump’s tariff plans have proved unpopular with foreign governments, economists nonetheless welcome the “peculiar” methods to increase America’s income. As Wharton professor Joao Gomes previously told Fortune: “You can also not deny that [Trump and his administration] bring strange forms of revenue that do change the debt picture.”

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