FactSentinel

The United States national debt surpassed the 30 trillion dollar threshold in February 2022, marking a significant milestone in the country's fiscal history. According to official data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which maintains real-time tracking of the national debt through TreasuryDirect.gov, the debt has remained above this level since crossing it. The national debt represents the total amount of money the federal government owes to creditors, including both debt held by the public and intragovernmental holdings such as Social Security trust funds.

This dramatic increase in national debt has been driven by multiple factors over recent decades, including tax cuts, increased government spending on programs like Social Security and Medicare, military expenditures, and emergency measures such as the COVID-19 pandemic relief packages passed in 2020 and 2021. The debt grew particularly rapidly during the pandemic, increasing by approximately 7 trillion dollars between early 2020 and 2022 as the government implemented unprecedented fiscal stimulus to support the economy.

To put this figure in perspective, the national debt now exceeds the annual gross domestic product of the United States, meaning the country owes more than the total value of all goods and services it produces in a year. The Congressional Budget Office and other nonpartisan fiscal watchdogs regularly publish reports confirming these debt levels and projecting continued growth in coming years absent significant policy changes to federal spending or revenue collection.