The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

How to survive a national debt scare

$40 trillion in national debt isn’t automatically a crisis. We should still be worried.

The national debt hasn’t been a major issue in the 2026 midterms. But perhaps it should be. As of last month, the United States is in debt to the tune of $40 trillion. That’s 12 zeros, which averages out to about $116,000 per American.

It’s enough that even economists like Jared Bernstein, the chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers under President Joe Biden, is starting to worry. Bernstein has long argued that the national debt is nothing to worry about too seriously as long as servicing it — that is, paying the interest on it — remains manageable.

Bernstein has since changed his tune. He told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram after last month’s debt milestone that while the number itself is “a big distraction,” two factors have him worried: Congress’s inaction and rising interest rates. But is it well and truly time to panic? Are we in a moment of no return?

Below is an excerpt of Sean’s conversation with Bernstein, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Have you now or ever been wrong about the national debt?

Tell me what your position was and why you think it maybe was wrong.

A lot of the economic work on the national debt involves forecasting, predicting where things are going. And nobody can really forecast things like interest rates or when there’s going to be another recession or a war or a pandemic, so nobody could honestly answer that question with, “I’ve been right about everything.”

But I feel good in the sense of being intellectually honest about how I’ve thought about this. When the numbers were pointing to a level of calmness about our fiscal outlook, even though lots of people had their hair on fire, I didn’t go there. I was pretty adamant that there wasn’t anything to be overly worried about at this point, for reasons that we can get into.

When the numbers changed, and the outlook changed, and the politics changed, I changed.

The US government has to start paying for things again

A flashing red light from the bond markets

Let’s start with why you thought it was........

© Vox