Reagan Sounded The Alarm At $1 Trillion. America’s National Debt Just Hit $40 Trillion.

The United States national debt surpassed $40 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, reaching another historic milestone as the federal government continues to run massive deficits. 

The debt topped $30 trillion for the first time just four years ago. When the country crossed the $1 trillion mark more than four decades ago, President Ronald Reagan pointed to the milestone as a warning about federal spending.

“If we as a nation needed a warning, let that be it,” President Reagan said in a televised address.

The national debt has continued to climb as federal spending has outpaced revenue under successive presidential administrations.

Financial firm River published a chart citing U.S. Treasury data that depicts federal spending across presidential administrations. Since the Nixon administration, federal spending and the national debt have virtually increased under each administration.

President Trump made reducing the national debt part of his 2024 campaign. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later said his job was to raise $1 trillion in revenue, while Elon Musk, who spearheaded the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative, was tasked with cutting $1 trillion in spending.

Trump himself sounded the alarm about federal borrowing more than a decade ago. In 2012, he described a $17 trillion national debt and a $1 trillion budget deficit as a “national security risk of the highest order.”

The federal government continues to spend substantially more than it collects, adding to the national debt. The Treasury Department reported a $432.3 billion deficit in July, the largest monthly deficit since March 2021, when President Joe Biden signed his COVID-19 stimulus package.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a longtime advocate of reducing federal spending, has repeatedly called for the government to return to pre-pandemic spending levels.

“What we are doing to our children, how we are robbing them of the opportunities and diminishing their prospects, that’s truly immoral,” Johnson said during an interview discussing funding for Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. “And we need to recognize that fact and we need to stop it.”

The $40 trillion milestone comes as Congress faces another government funding deadline. Lawmakers must fund the federal government for fiscal year 2027, or pass a continuing resolution, by September 30 to avoid a funding lapse.