America’s Debt Is Now Bigger Than the GDP. Does It Matter?

The United States national debt has now grown beyond the size of the country’s GDP, punctuating a long-running trajectory that has left budget hawks skittish, but Congress appears uninterested in countering.According to advance estimates released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), America’s gross domestic product (GDP) totaled $31.22 trillion over the 12 months to March 31, now slightly under the $31.27 trillion in debt held by the country at the end of this quarter.It marks the first crossing of the 100 percent threshold—double the historical average—outside of wartime since shortly after WWII and briefly during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has renewed calls from concerned lawmakers and groups for an urgent change in course, as the U.S. continues to run historically large deficits that could soon break the 106 percent record.“We have now borrowed more money than our economy produces in a year,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told Newsweek. “The debt slows economic growth, pushes up borrowing costs and prices, and leaves us vulnerable to a fiscal crisis in the future,” she said. “There are good milestones, and bad ones, and this is the worst kind there is.”Why