Greenhouse traces $11.6tn Trump-era debt rise to OBBBA tax cuts

Columnist says OBBBA-driven debt growth has pushed mortgage rates higher

The US federal debt has reached $40 trillion under President Donald Trump, up $11.6 trillion since Trump first took office, Guardian opinion columnist Steven Greenhouse writes in a Sept. 3 column. Greenhouse attributes the rise largely to Trump’s signature “big, beautiful bill,” which he projects will add $3.4 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

Greenhouse, a journalist and author who focuses on labor and economic policy, opens by noting that Trump pledged during the 2016 campaign to “totally eliminate the debt within eight years” — a promise the columnist says has not been fulfilled. The $40 trillion figure Greenhouse cites matches the Treasury Department’s disclosure in August that gross federal debt had crossed that threshold for the first time.

Greenhouse writes that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed earlier this year, contained $4.4 trillion in tax cuts, with “nearly half” going to the richest 5 percent of Americans. The columnist argues that the trillions spent on tax cuts “could have instead been used to address the affordability crisis,” pointing to affordable childcare, healthcare subsidies, and college aid as alternative uses he says would have eased financial pressure on US households.

The columnist also contends that the borrowing required to finance the tax cuts has helped push long-term interest rates to their highest level in nearly two decades, a development he ties to higher mortgage rates and reduced housing affordability. Greenhouse attributes the rate increases to investor concerns over the debt level, alongside inflation pressures he attributes to Trump’s tariffs and the “war against Iran.”

Looking ahead, Greenhouse projects that by the mid-2030s, annual federal interest payments will exceed $2 trillion, roughly double the current approximately $1 trillion annual figure. He compares the current interest bill to spending that is “slightly less” than the annual Medicare budget, “higher than this year’s Pentagon budget,” and “more than five times” annual federal education spending.

Greenhouse places the trajectory in historical context. He writes that during President George W. Bush’s two terms, federal debt grew by $4.9 trillion, or 85 percent, fueled by tax cuts and the Iraq war. During Trump’s first term, debt rose by $7.8 trillion, or 39 percent, which Greenhouse attributes to Trump’s first-term tax cuts, increased Pentagon spending, and pandemic emergency spending. During former President Joe Biden’s four years, debt grew by $8.4 trillion, a rise Greenhouse attributes in part to inherited deficits and pandemic-era emergency measures.

The columnist projects that Trump’s second term will add “nearly $8tn” more in additional debt, citing Trump’s push for a $1.5 trillion annual defense budget — what the columnist describes as the largest in US history. Greenhouse also reports that the debt-to-GDP ratio will soon exceed the 106 percent record set at the end of World War II, contrasting WWII-era borrowing, which he says financed the defeat of Nazi Germany, with current deficits he says finance “a disastrous war in Iran” alongside the tax cuts.

Greenhouse closes his column with a campaign-season appeal, writing that Democrats should make Republican fiscal policy a “hard-hitting and winning campaign issue” that he says they can use against Trump and congressional Republicans, alongside the affordability crisis and the war in Iran. He identifies himself as “not a fiscal conservative” but argues that other countries and investors are now “truly worried” about the size of the federal debt in a way that has not previously been the case in US history.

The column appears in the Guardian’s “comment is free” opinion section.

MSI has tracked the US debt trajectory as it crossed the $40 trillion threshold in August, with prior reporting on the Treasury Department’s first disclosure of the milestone and on an analyst tracing the rise to a decades-long “starve the beast” fiscal strategy. Greenhouse’s column extends the ongoing commentary with new specifics on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s projected contribution to the debt.