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Latest U.S. National Debt Amount
- Thread starter KenH
- Start date
KenH
Well-Known Member
KenH
Well-Known Member
5 months after hitting $39 trillion in national debt, the United States is now at $40 trillion in national debt. And, by the way, with 43 days left in fiscal year 2026, if the year-to-date number is extrapolated to the end of the fiscal year, the total for fiscal year 2026 would end up being $2.73 trillion.
The UK National Debt is somewhere around £3 trillion, which is about the same proprtion of GDP.
China's National Debt is around 100 trillion Yuan, which is about $14 trillion.
China's National Debt is around 100 trillion Yuan, which is about $14 trillion.
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KenH
Well-Known Member
Unless Christ returns first, if (maybe I should say when) the chickens come home to roost concerning all of this financial profligacy by the United States national government, I don't doubt that it will take down the whole world's financial systems with it - the U.K., China, all of it.
Foxmeister
Active Member
Just think, both those years belong to Trump. So much for that promise of paying off the debt.
But isn't Congress who spends the money - (and YES, I say the same thing when the POTUS has a "D" after his name)
Foxmeister
Active Member
Trump seems to have the Republicans in his pocket. This country has gotten so far away from God and that's why it's in a mess. I don't see the country recovering.
KenH
Well-Known Member
It would require a constitutional amendment, per Article I, Section 7, Clause 2. And I think that getting any constitutional amendment added to the constitution would be almost impossible in today's political environment.
Foxmeister
Active Member
From Article 1, Section 7, "Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the federal Line Item Veto Act of 1996 unconstitutional in the 1998 case Clinton v. City of New York. The Court stated that it violated the Presentment Clause and the Separation of Powers by allowing the president to unilaterally change laws passed by Congress. Amending the Constitution to give the president authority to execute a line item veto could very well be a slippery slope. A line item veto could be misused when an executive leader uses it for political leverage or to alter the original intent of a law, rather than for its intended purpose of cutting waste. An example would be a president using the threat of a line item veto to demand lawmakers vote for a separate, unrelated piece of legislation in exchange for sparing their project's funding.
A line item veto would also weaken Congress, the legislative branch. If the president were allowed to do this, the president essentially takes over the job of making law, rather than enforcing it.
KenH
Well-Known Member
To provide further backup to what @Foxmeister posted:
"In 1996, Congress approved and the President Bill Clinton signed the Line Item Veto Act. The law empowered the President, within five days of signing a bill, to cancel certain spending items and targeted, defined tax benefits. In exercising this authority, the President was to determine that the cancellation of each item would (1) reduce the Federal budget deficit; (2) not impair any essential Government functions; and (3) not harm the national interest.
In Clinton v. City of New York, the Supreme Court held the Act unconstitutional because it did not comply with the Presentment Clause. Although Congress in passing the Act considered itself to have been delegating power to the President, the Court instead analyzed the statute under the Presentment Clause. In the Court’s view, two bills from which the President subsequently struck items became law the moment the President signed them. His cancellations thus amended and, in part, repealed the two federal laws. The Court explained, however, that statutory repeals must conform to the Presentment Clause’s single, finely wrought and exhaustively considered, procedure for enacting or repealing a law. The Court held that the procedures in the Act did not, and could not, comply with that clause. The Act purported to allow the President to act in a legislative capacity, altering a law. But nothing in the Constitution authorized the President to amend or repeal a statute unilaterally, and the Court construed both constitutional silence and the historical practice over 200 years as an express prohibition of the President’s action."
- more at https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S7-C2-3/ALDE_00013646/