THURSDAY: National debt jumps $7 trillion!

THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 2025

It happens every time: Readers of today's New York Times may be a bit perplexed.

We'll stick with reports in today's print editions. On Page 1A, readers will find this report, and it will tell them this:

Republican Policy Bill Would Add $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says

[,,,]

The United States government currently has roughly $29 trillion in public debt, and the budget office had previously forecast that it would grow by roughly $21 trillion over the next decade, reaching nearly $50 trillion in 2034, as a growing share of Americans take advantage of government retirement support. With a roughly $3.8 trillion tax cut at its core, the Republican bill had long been expected to significantly add to that debt and make a precarious situation worse.

Yesterday afternoon, we praised that report for the clarity of its presentation. This very morning, there it sat, on the print edition's front page.

The problem arrived when the assiduous reader turned to a second report. It sat on the front page too, but this second report said this:

Republicans Try to Discredit Experts Warning About the Cost of Tax Cuts

[...]

Citing an extension of tax cuts as a potential driver of U.S. debt, which now exceeds $36 trillion, the ratings firm Moody’s last month downgraded the nation’s credit. Yet Republicans have overwhelmingly rejected the negative assessments, even suggesting at times that the tax cuts technically cost nothing, since some of them were already in place.

Once again, we'll cite Goldberg's Law, the old joke we learned, log ago, from the far-seeing Paul Reiser:

Goldberg's Law
The man with one watch always knows the time. The man with two watches is never quite sure.

At any rate, there the two reports sat, sharing space on the front page of this morning's print editions.

Desperate for some minor clarity, a reader might have turned to the Washington Post. At that second locale, he or she would have found this:

Trump proposes policies that would increase the soaring national debt

President Donald Trump is pursuing an agenda that would add trillions of dollars to the soaring national debt, ignoring warnings from Wall Street, Republican deficit hawks and his outgoing cost-cutting champion.

[...]

The national debt now sits at $36.2 trillion, after sharp increases under Trump and President Joe Biden. 

That matches the second report in the Times. For that reason, we see no need for a further bromide about the person who has three watches.

We've often mentioned the problems caused by the endless complexification of our various governmental systems. In this instance, let the word go forth to the nations:

"Debt held by the public" is one of the two major components of the entity known as the national debt. The leading authority on this matter quickly spells it out:

National debt of the United States

The "national debt of the United States" is the total national debt owed by the federal government of the United States to treasury security holders. The national debt at a given point in time is the face value of the then outstanding treasury securities that have been issued by the Treasury and other federal agencies.

[...]

There are two components of gross national debt:

"Debt held by the public"—such as Treasury securities held by investors outside the federal government, including those held by individuals, corporations, the Federal Reserve, and foreign, state and local governments.

"Debt held by government accounts" or "intragovernmental debt"—is non-marketable Treasury securities held in accounts of programs administered by the federal government, such as the Social Security Trust Fund. Debt held by government accounts represents the cumulative surpluses, including interest earnings, of various government programs that have been invested in Treasury securities.

In this morning's Times, the one report was referring to that initial component. The second report—right there on the same front page!—was referring to the whole shebang, to so-called gross national debt. Or at least something like that!

Yesterday, the key point we wanted to stress was this:

As matters stand right now—before the Congress passes any new bills—the national debt is already projected to "soar" over the next ten years. 

As matters stand, the national debt will be more than $20 trillion larger after the next ten years. Instead of possibly holding the line on that current grim projection; instead of possibly reducing the projected amount of additional debt; instead of generating "balanced budgets," which would hold the amount of debt right where it is this very day—instead of accomplishing one of those tasks, the GOP budget bill is projected to add a few trillion dollars to the roughly $20 trillion of additional debt which is already slated to accumulate.

'Unsustainable," Paul Krugman has said. That's why we mention this topic. And while we're at it:

Have you seen a Democratic Party plan for a more viable budget? Under current arrangements, no such proposal could move forward. But have you seen that other party—the party we ourselves vote for—even suggest the outlines of the appropriate way to move on into the future? 

What should happen to taxation? What should happen to spending? Have you seen anyone even attempt to say?  

In discussing the GOP budget bill, our journalists tend to rush past the $20 trillion in new debt which is already projected to accumulate. Quite frequently, they mention only the several trillion additional dollars in new debt which the CBO says will be created by the GOP bill.

This morning, readers of the New York Times had to make a choice. The one front-page report said the debt stands at $29 trillion.  A second report on that same front page seemed to jump that to $36 trillion!

The reports shared space on today's front page. A contradiction may have seemed to obtain. Did anyone notice this small imperfection? Also, does anyone actually care?

For extra credit only: The one report in the Times carries this headline. We aren't saying it's wrong:

Republican Policy Bill Would Add $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says

We aren't saying that headline is wrong! That said, could the Times have gone with this headline instead?

Under Republican Policy Bill, Debt Would Soar by $23 Trillion, CBO says

Would a headline like that have been wrong? Especially assuming that Krugman is right, which headline would carry more salience?