America’s national debt has now reached a level equal to approximately $287,859 per household, according to a new report.
Terence Jeffrey noted the mind-boggling number in a Wednesday CNS News commentary following the passage of a new debt ceiling bill in Congress on Tuesday.
The current national debt has reached about $28.9 trillion according to the report, a number that is expected to climb following the new debt ceiling move this week.
“If you divide the $28,908,004,857,445 in debt that the federal government owed before the debt limit was lifted by the 100,424,240 American households that paid net income taxes in 2018, it works out to approximately $287,859 per income-tax-paying household,” Jeffrey wrote.
The total does not include households in America that do not pay taxes, including undocumented migrants.
How does the $287K number compare with past administrations regarding national debt? The report contrasted today’s amount with 1989, the last year Republican President Ronald Reagan served in office.
“Back in 1989, the year that President Ronald Reagan left office, there were 89,178,355 income-tax-paying households in the United States, according to the IRS. At the end of January that year, the federal debt was $2,697,957,000,000,” the report revealed. “That means the federal debt then equaled approximately $30,253 per income-tax-paying household.”
Even adjusted for inflation, the amount would only equal $69,437 per household. “In real terms, the current federal debt of $287,859 per income-tax-paying household is more than four times that much.”
On Tuesday, Congress approved a $2.5 trillion debt ceiling increase, ending months of debate between Democratic and Republican leadership. The Daily Wire reported:
In 2019, Congress suspended the debt ceiling — which prevents the federal government from assuming a certain level of national debt — until August 2021. In an attempt to make Democrats enact a permanent solution on their own by the end of the year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave Democrats a short-term deal in October to suspend the debt ceiling.
In a party-line vote, however, lawmakers settled upon an arrangement that will fund the government through the 2022 midterm elections. The New York Times reported:
Democrats were united in support of the measure, which passed the Senate 50 to 49 along party lines on Tuesday afternoon and then cleared the House in a 221-to-209 vote shortly after midnight on Wednesday. Republicans opposed the legislation en masse, with only one, Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, voting in favor. The bill now heads to President Biden, who was expected to quickly sign it.
The swift action came a week after party leaders announced a deal to establish a one-time fast-track process to increase the debt ceiling with a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 votes needed to move most legislation through the Senate.
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was among GOP leaders to oppose the debt ceiling increase. In a statement emailed to The Daily Wire, he said:
Our national debt is $28.9 trillion, and today Senate Democrats voted to increase the debt limit by $2.5 trillion, the single largest increase ever enacted by Congress. At the same time, President Biden and the Democrats are hell bent on ramming through their radical Build Back Broke agenda to spend trillions of dollars more on socialist priorities, which will drive inflation even higher and make it more expensive for hard working families to put food on their table, gas up their cars, and heat their homes. Americans could not have asked for a worse gift for Christmas.