The US National Debt has surpassed $37 trillion dollars, an astronomical amount.
We’ve always been in debt, but not like this. Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, liked debt and wanted our country in long-term debt. Alan Taylor, in American Revolutions, writes, “Emulating a British prime minister, Hamilton meant to dominate the [Washington] administration and build a powerful, centralized nation like Britian… Hamilton designed both policy and the bureaucracy to implement it.” As for the large debt hanging over the infant nation, Taylor continues, “Rather than pay that debt down to nothing, [Hamilton] meant to finance a permanent national debt… for he considered a funded debt a ‘national blessing.'”
Thomas Jefferson, writing three years after the founding of the US Treasury, further explains Hamilton’s fondness for debt;
“This exactly marks the difference between Colo Hamilton’s views & mine, that I would wish the debt paid tomorrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing where with to corrupt & manage the legislature.”
Jefferson’s approach is more appropriate. Imagine his reaction to not only today’s staggering amount of debt but also our government’s unwillingness to do anything about it.
The enormous spending package Congress passed this year, named the One Big Beautiful Bill until Sen. Schumer changed it to The Act, increases the National Debt. The estimates on how much vary, but none of them claim the massive spend-o-rama will decrease the National Debt. That alone should have been enough for conservatives to defeat that bill and start again. The argument defending the One Big Beautiful Bill has been it’s the best they could do, which is insufficient. We send reps to Congress to hammer out difficult, complex budgets. Instead, we get enormous spending packages, never budgets, and certainly never budgets that include significant debt reductions and codified, long-term decreases in spending.
Today’s National Debt is not a national blessing, and even Hamilton would be shocked at the increasing amount. $37 trillion is more wealth than Hamilton and Jefferson ever saw in their lives.