With Debt at $38 Trillion, Trump Is Mismanaging U.S. Finances

The U.S. national debt has surged past $38 trillion, according to the Treasury Department, just two months after exceeding earlier forecasts to reach $37 trillion in August.

The cost of servicing the debt is mounting rapidly.

This means the federal debt rose by $1 trillion in a little over two months — the fastest rate of growth outside the pandemic, according to calculations by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, Fortune’s Nick Lichtenberg reported.

Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the nonpartisan watchdog dedicated to fiscal sustainability, said the milestone is “the latest troubling sign that lawmakers are not meeting their basic fiscal duties.”

In a statement to Fortune, Peterson said, “If it seems like we are adding debt faster than ever, that’s because we are. We passed $37 trillion just two months ago, and the pace we’re on is twice as fast as the rate of growth since 2000.”

The foundation’s analysis attributes the acceleration to a combination of deficit spending, rising interest costs, and the economic drag of the ongoing government shutdown.

Peterson emphasized that the cost of servicing the debt is mounting rapidly. Interest payments now total roughly $1 trillion per year — the fastest-growing category in the federal budget.

Over the past decade, the government has spent $4 trillion on interest, and Peterson projected that this figure will balloon to $14 trillion over the next 10 years.

He warned that such spending “crowds out important public and private investments in our future.”

The shutdown, now in its third week, is compounding those challenges. Past shutdowns have been costly, adding $4 billion to expenses during the 2018–2019 closure and $2 billion in 2013, according to federal estimates.

Each day of stalled operations contributes to higher short-term costs and delayed economic activity and reforms — worsening the very debt problem such political standoffs often stem from.