The USA can reduce its national debt. It has done it before

In August 2026, the gross national debt of the United States passed $40 trillion for the first time. By early October it stood at roughly $40.25 trillion, of which about $32.4 trillion was held by the public and the rest was owed to federal trust funds.¹ The fiscal year that ended September 30 produced a deficit of nearly $2 trillion, the net result of about $7.4 trillion in spending and $5.4 trillion in revenue, and net interest on the debt passed $1 trillion.²

Numbers like these breed fatalism. Many Americans have concluded that the debt can only go up, and politicians in both parties often behave as if they agree.

I don't accept that. The United States has reduced its debt burden many times, after wars, after financial panics, and within living memory. My argument in this article is simple. America can do it again, and the historical record shows what actually works: sustained budget discipline, meaning revenue that covers spending other than interest, combined with policies that let the economy grow. Hoping to outgrow the debt has never been enough. The record also contains some lessons my fellow conservatives should face honestly, including the fact that the two most recent surplus periods involved higher revenue as well as spending restraint. And today's challenge is larger than any the country has solved before. That is a reason to start, not a reason to despair.

First, Two Ideas That Clear Up Most of the Confusion

A deficit is not the same as the debt. The deficit is the gap between what the government spends and what it collects in a single year. The debt is the accumulated total of past borrowing. Cutting the deficit slows the growth of the debt; only a surplus actually reduces it in dollars.

The debt's size in dollars is not the same as its burden. What matters most for a nation's ability to carry its debt is the size of that debt relative to the economy that supports it, usually measured as debt as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).

A simple example shows the difference. Suppose a country owes $30 trillion and produces $30 trillion of output a year. Its debt is 100 percent of GDP. Now suppose its debt grows to $32 trillion while its economy grows to $40 trillion. The country owes more dollars than before, but its debt burden has fallen to 80 percent of GDP.

That is why "reducing the debt" usually means reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio, and why the realistic goal is not to pay off $40 trillion. It is to put the debt on a path where it grows more slowly than the economy, and then let the ratio fall. Throughout this article, I use debt held by the public, the measure economists generally prefer, unless I say otherwise.

Where We Stand Today

Gross national debt (Oct. 2026)about $40.25 trillion

Debt held by the publicabout $32.4 trillion

Debt held by the public, share of GDPabout 101 percent

FY2026 deficit (actual)about $1.99 trillion

Net interest, FY2026more than $1 trillion

CBO projection, 2036about 120 percent of GDP

CBO projection, 2056about 175 percent of GDP

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that under current law, debt held by the public will rise from about 101 percent of GDP this year to about 120 percent in 2036, passing the all-time record of 106 percent set in 1946. Net interest is projected to grow from 3.3 percent of GDP to 4.6 percent over the same period.³ CBO's longer-range projections put the ratio at about 175 percent by 2056.⁴

One figure in CBO's outlook deserves more attention than it gets. The primary deficit, the deficit excluding interest, is about 2.6 percent of GDP this year. The gap between where we are and a stable path is large but not unbridgeable. Interest, compounding on an already large debt, is what turns a serious problem into a runaway one.

The Record: Seven Times America Brought Its Debt Burden Down

The Treasury's historical records, which go back to 1790, show a pattern that repeats across American history: debt rises sharply in a war or crisis and is then paid down or outgrown.⁵

1. Jefferson and Gallatin Pay Down the Revolutionary Debt (1801–1812)

When Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801, the federal debt stood at about $83 million, largely the Revolutionary War debt Alexander Hamilton had consolidated and funded. Jefferson's Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, made paying it down a priority. Through spending restraint, especially on the military, and steady customs revenue, the debt fell to about $57 million by the end of Jefferson's second term and to about $45 million by January 1812, even though the government borrowed to buy Louisiana along the way.

The War of 1812 then undid much of that progress: the debt rose to about $119 million by late 1815.⁶ The lesson is a durable one. Debt reduction requires either peace or discipline in how wars are paid for.

2. Andrew Jackson Pays It Off (1829–1835)

Andrew Jackson regarded public debt as a danger to the republic. Helped by booming sales of western public land, tariff revenue, and his willingness to veto spending he considered wasteful, the government cut the debt from about $58 million in 1829 to about $34,000 in 1835. By January 1835, all of its interest-bearing debt had been retired, the first and only time in American history. In 1835 the budget surplus was larger than the government's entire spending for the year. The achievement did not last; the Panic of 1837 brought borrowing back. But it proved that a determined government could retire its obligations completely.

3. A Generation of Surpluses After the Civil War (1866–1893)

The Civil War took the federal debt from about $65 million in 1860 to about $2.7 billion, an enormous sum for the time. What followed was nearly three decades of uninterrupted budget surpluses. Wartime taxes were wound down gradually, tariff revenue was strong, and peacetime spending stayed modest. By 1893, Treasury records show the debt down to roughly $1.5 billion, a reduction of more than 40 percent in dollars, while a fast-growing economy shrank its burden far more.

4. Harding, Coolidge, and Mellon (1920–1930)

World War I left the country with about $25.5 billion of debt in 1919. Under Presidents Harding and Coolidge and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, the government ran eleven consecutive surpluses. Spending was cut sharply from wartime levels, the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 brought order to federal budgeting, and wartime tax rates were lowered in stages while revenue held up in a growing economy. By 1930, the debt had fallen to about $16.2 billion, a reduction of roughly 36 percent in dollars.

5. After World War II: 106 Percent to 23 Percent (1946–1974)

This is the most important precedent, because its starting point looks like today. In 1946, debt held by the public stood at 106 percent of GDP. By 1974 it had fallen to about 23 percent. The dollar amount of debt barely fell; the burden fell because the debt grew much more slowly than the economy.

It is often said that America simply grew its way out of its war debt. The best research says that is only part of the story, and the researchers disagree with one another about how big a part.

• Economists George Hall and Thomas Sargent, as summarized by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, divided the decline from 1945 to 1974 into three sources (using their own measure of debt, which fell from about 97 percent of GDP to about 17 percent). Budget surpluses excluding interest accounted for about 35 percentage points, economic growth about 32 points, and inflation that pushed real returns on government bonds below zero about 16 points.⁷
• Economists Julien Acalin and Laurence Ball, in a study published in July 2026, go further. They estimate that with the government's actual primary surpluses but without the artificially low interest rates of that era (the Federal Reserve's peg on bond yields until 1951, plus surprise inflation), debt would have fallen only to about 74 percent of GDP by 1974, not to 23 percent. In their account, growth alone contributed relatively little; primary surpluses and the suppression of interest rates did most of the work.⁸

The studies disagree about how much credit growth deserves, but they agree on two points that matter for today. First, the postwar government paid down part of its war debt by collecting more in taxes than it spent on everything except interest. Second, part of the decline came from holding interest rates below inflation, which quietly transferred losses to bondholders. That second tool was a hidden tax on savers, and it is neither available nor desirable today.

6. The Overlooked Surplus of 1969

Between 1960 and 1998, the federal government ran a surplus exactly once. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 1969, a booming economy combined with a temporary income-tax surcharge, imposed to help pay for the Vietnam War, produced a surplus of about $3.2 billion.⁹ It was small and brief, but it is a reminder that balancing the budget during a costly war required asking taxpayers to pay for it.

7. The Late-1990s Surpluses (1998–2001)

Most living Americans have witnessed a debt-reduction episode, even if they have forgotten it. From fiscal 1998 through 2001, the government ran four straight surpluses, the only ones since 1969.¹⁰ According to Brookings economists William Gale and Tayae Rogers, the debt-to-GDP ratio fell from 49.5 percent to 34.5 percent over seven years.¹¹

The credit is genuinely bipartisan, and both sides should own it:

• The 1990 budget agreement under President George H. W. Bush created discretionary spending caps and "pay-as-you-go" rules requiring new tax cuts or entitlement spending to be offset.
• President Clinton's 1993 budget raised taxes on high earners and slowed the growth of spending.
• The Republican Congress elected in 1994, led by Speaker Newt Gingrich, pressed hard for spending restraint, and the 1996 welfare reform replaced open-ended welfare with work requirements.
• The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 was negotiated between Clinton and that Republican Congress.
• A post-Cold War reduction in defense spending and a technology boom that sent capital-gains revenue soaring did much of the rest.

Gale and Rogers make a sobering point: by their arithmetic, the 1993 changes amounted to only about 0.63 percent of GDP a year in the following years. The economic boom did a great deal of the heavy lifting.

One technical point is worth knowing. During the surplus years, debt held by the public actually fell, but total debt kept rising. Social Security was running large surpluses of its own, and by law those were invested in Treasury securities held inside the government. That is one reason economists focus on debt held by the public.

And More Recently: The Sub-3-Percent Years

America's fiscal discipline is not just ancient history. A resolution introduced in the House in 2026 notes that the federal deficit was below 3 percent of GDP in 1989, 1994 through 1997, 2002, 2005 through 2007, and 2014 and 2015, in addition to the four surplus years.¹² Deficits of that size or smaller are enough to stop the debt ratio from climbing. The country has done it repeatedly in the last four decades.

The Record at a Glance

Period	What happened	Main drivers
1801–1812	About $83M to $45M	Spending restraint, customs revenue
1829–1835	About $58M to nearly zero	Land sales, tariffs, vetoes
1866–1893	About $2.7B to $1.5B	Decades of surpluses, growth
1919–1930	About $25.5B to $16.2B	11 surpluses, spending cuts, budget reform
1946–1974	106% to 23% of GDP	Primary surpluses, suppressed rates, growth
1969	One-year surplus	Tax surcharge, booming economy
1998–2001	Four straight surpluses	Budget rules, bipartisan deals, boom

The Common Pattern

Look across these episodes and the same ingredients appear again and again:

1. Revenue covered spending other than interest. In nearly every episode, the government ran primary surpluses or close to it. Debt does not shrink while a government borrows to cover its ordinary bills.
2. Spending fell back after the emergency ended. The successful episodes did not lock temporary wartime or crisis spending into the permanent budget.
3. Growth helped, but it did not work alone. A growing economy raises revenue and shrinks the ratio, but the best research suggests growth was a partner to discipline, not a substitute for it.
4. The budget process had rules with teeth. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 and the 1990 caps and pay-as-you-go rules both forced trade-offs politicians otherwise avoid.
5. Leaders treated debt as a moral obligation. Gallatin, Jackson, Coolidge, and Eisenhower spoke of debt in terms of liberty, character, and duty to the next generation.
6. The deals were broadly accepted. Debt reduction rarely survives if one party sees it as the other party's victory.

Why This Time Is Harder

History shows that debt reduction is possible. It does not promise that the old methods will work again. Gale and Rogers, among others, argue that every past fix was too small for the problem we now face. Four differences stand out.

There is no war to end. In nearly every earlier episode, the debt was created by a war, and peace allowed military spending to fall sharply. Today's deficits come from a permanent gap between what the government has promised and what it collects. Defense spending was only about 3 percent of GDP in 2023, compared with 9 percent in 1960, so the old recipe of demobilization is not available.

Growth will probably be slower. From 1950 to 1973, real economic growth averaged about 4 percent a year, with about 2.3 percentage points coming from a rapidly growing labor force as baby boomers, and many women, entered work. Over the next 30 years, growth is expected to average about 1.8 percent, with labor-force growth contributing only about 0.4 points. Productivity is expected to contribute about the same as before; what has disappeared is the workforce boom.

The population is aging. Social Security and Medicare costs rise automatically as baby boomers retire and health costs grow. Unlike war spending, these do not wind down on their own.

Interest rates are no longer suppressed. The postwar decline relied partly on interest rates held below inflation. Today's debt is financed at market rates, and the average interest rate the Treasury pays has more than doubled since 2021. Deliberately inflating the debt away would be a hidden tax on every saver and retiree holding dollars, and markets would demand higher rates in response. It is not a painless option, and it should not be on the table.

What It Would Take

The goal should not be paying off $40 trillion. It should be stabilizing the debt and then reducing it relative to the economy, the same thing America accomplished after 1946.

A Clear Target: Deficits of 3 Percent of GDP

The most widely supported benchmark today comes from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan budget watchdog: bring annual deficits down to about 3 percent of GDP, roughly half their current level.¹³ At that level, the debt would stop growing faster than the economy. Resolutions endorsing the target were introduced in both the House and the Senate in 2026 with bipartisan sponsors. Even budget scholars at the libertarian Cato Institute have endorsed the target, while stressing that it must be paired with a mechanism such as a fiscal commission that can actually enact reforms.¹⁴

A realistic plan would proceed in stages:

1. Stabilize the ratio. Bring deficits down toward 3 percent of GDP so the debt stops outrunning the economy.
2. Keep narrowing the gap. Continue reducing deficits as reforms phase in and interest costs ease.
3. Run surpluses when conditions allow. Use them to reduce debt held by the public, as in 1998–2001.
4. Lock in the gains. Keep enforceable budget rules so the progress is not reversed at the first opportunity.

The Tools

Make growth a priority. Regulatory reform, abundant domestic energy, workforce participation, and pro-investment tax policy can raise the economy's long-run growth rate. Even a few tenths of a percentage point of extra growth each year compounds into trillions of dollars over a decade. But no responsible plan should assume unusually optimistic growth.

Restore budget rules with teeth. Statutory spending caps, pay-as-you-go rules with fewer waivers, and a fiscal commission whose recommendations get an up-or-down vote have all been proposed by members of both parties. The 1983 Social Security commission is the precedent: a bipartisan panel proposed a mix of payroll tax increases and benefit changes, including a gradual rise in the retirement age, and Congress and President Reagan enacted them. Abroad, the best example is Sweden, a country progressives often hold up as a model. After the deep economic crisis of the early 1990s left it with very large deficits and fast-rising debt, Sweden adopted a binding multi-year ceiling on government spending and a budget surplus target. Its gross government debt then fell from about 70 percent of GDP at the end of the 1990s to 43 percent in 2015.¹⁵ Rules with teeth worked there, and they can work here.

Reform the entitlement programs gradually. Social Security and Medicare are the main long-term drivers of spending, and there is no serious plan that leaves them untouched. Gale and Rogers note that despite the 1983 reforms, Social Security's financing gap is now about twice as large as it was then. Reasonable options include:

• Gradually raising the full retirement age beyond its current 67 (already in place for anyone born in 1960 or later)¹⁶ for younger workers, ideally tied to longevity, with a clear and generous path for people whose health or physically demanding work makes that unrealistic.
• Means-testing benefits, so that the wealthiest retirees receive less from programs funded by working taxpayers.
• More price competition in health care, to slow the growth of Medicare costs.

Current retirees and those near retirement should be protected; the changes should be phased in over years, as the 1983 reforms were.

Cut waste and duplication. The Government Accountability Office has documented large sums in improper federal payments and overlapping programs year after year. Savings here will not solve the problem alone, but they build public trust that sacrifices are being shared fairly.

Broaden the tax base rather than simply raising rates. Taxes set too low leave the government unable to perform its legitimate functions; taxes set too high discourage work, saving, and investment. A balance is needed, and the best way to raise revenue with the least economic damage is to close narrow loopholes and special preferences while keeping rates competitive. Conservatives should also be honest about the record: the 1969 surplus and the 1990s surpluses both involved higher revenue. That does not mean higher tax rates are the answer. It does mean that a plan that refuses to discuss revenue at all is unlikely to reach 3 percent.

Work, Retirement, and Stewardship

The debate over Social Security usually assumes that stopping work entirely in one's sixties is the natural order of things. Historically, it is not. For most of human history, people worked until they were no longer able to. Mass retirement is a modern development, beginning with Bismarck's pension system in the 1880s and, in the United States, with the Social Security Act of 1935.

My own conviction is that people should keep working as long as they are able. I recognize that this is a moral conviction, not a policy that can be imposed on everyone, and that a roofer at 68 is in a different position from a consultant at 68. But Scripture offers a picture that fits our situation well. When the Levites reached fifty, they stepped back from the heavy work of the tabernacle, yet they continued to serve by assisting their brothers (Numbers 8:24–26). Work changed its form; it did not end. Management thinker Peter Drucker gave modern advice in the same spirit: build a second career or volunteer role during your working years, so that later life is a shift in contribution rather than a full stop.

A society in which more able-bodied people keep contributing longer, in whatever form suits their health, is a society with a stronger tax base and a more sustainable safety net. It is also a society better able to honor the proverb that "a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children" (Proverbs 13:22). A nation, like a household, has a duty of stewardship to those who come after it, and "the borrower is servant to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7).

A Different Angle: Debt Compared With National Wealth

Sidebar. Debt-to-GDP compares the debt with one year of national income. Another way to gauge America's capacity is to compare the debt with the nation's accumulated wealth. At the end of the second quarter of 2026, the net worth of American households and nonprofits was about $195.9 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve.¹⁷ Against a gross federal debt of roughly $40 trillion, that puts the debt at about 20 percent of household net worth.

By comparison, Federal Reserve data suggest that in 1946, household net worth was roughly 5.4 times disposable income, which works out to well under $1 trillion against a federal debt of about $250 billion, or roughly 30 percent.¹⁸ By this measure, the burden today is lighter than it was after World War II.

Two caveats matter. First, this ratio depends heavily on stock and home prices; a sharp market decline would push it back up regardless of anything Congress does. Second, household wealth belongs to households, not to the government. This figure measures the nation's capacity to carry its debt, not a source of repayment. It is a reason for confidence, not complacency.

Objections, and My Answers

A fair case has to take the strongest counterarguments seriously, and answer them.

• The postwar formula can't be repeated. A large share of the 1946–1974 decline came from interest rates held artificially low and from surprise inflation. Those tools are unavailable in today's markets, and using them deliberately would punish savers.
• Demographics are working against us. An aging population means entitlement costs rise automatically, a headwind earlier generations did not face.
• Japan shows high debt doesn't automatically mean collapse. Japan's government debt has been well above 200 percent of GDP for years, yet it remains a wealthy, technologically advanced country. Its debt burden, however, has come with decades of slow growth and creates serious long-term risks. It is a warning as much as a reassurance.
• "Our rivals are weaker, so what's the rush?" China and Russia are both struggling. China's property market has collapsed, prices have fallen for three straight years, and its growth leans ever harder on exports.¹⁹ Logan Wright of Rhodium Group, author of Broken China, argues that its export-led growth strategy has reached a dead end.²⁰ Russia's war economy has slid toward stagnation, with interest rates around 16 percent and a tax increase to pay for the fighting.²¹ Their troubles do help America in one way: when other economies look shakier, global savings flow into dollars and Treasury bonds, which helps hold down U.S. borrowing costs. China has cut its Treasury holdings to the lowest level since 2008, yet total foreign holdings remain above $9.3 trillion.²² Their weakness also opens real opportunities. As Europe has turned away from Russian pipeline gas, American liquefied natural gas has taken much of the market; the United States is projected to supply about two-thirds of Europe's LNG imports in 2026.²³ Companies, capital, and talent leaving a riskier China can likewise come here. But after World War II, America did not simply wait for prosperity; it built it, through the Marshall Plan and a new trading system. Opportunity seized helps pay down the debt; opportunity assumed is just "we'll grow our way out" in a new form. Meanwhile, rivals' weakness cuts no spending, and it brings no peace dividend; a declining power at war, or arming for one, can be more dangerous, not less. Cheap borrowing is exactly what lulled Washington in the 2010s. China's troubles are better read as a warning that a growth model built on debt works only until the bill comes due. As Paul wrote of Israel's failures in the wilderness, "all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition" (1 Corinthians 10:11). Time bought is valuable only if it is used.
• "There's no hurry." Some economists, mostly on the center-left, argue that high debt can be carried indefinitely as long as economic growth outpaces the interest rate on the debt. That argument looked plausible in the 2010s, when rates were near zero. It looks much weaker now. The average interest rate on the Treasury's marketable debt has more than doubled in five years, and net interest passed $1 trillion this year. Waiting is a bet that cheap money will return, and every year of delay makes the eventual adjustment larger.
• Debt reduction should not mean austerity at any cost. Investments in defense, infrastructure, and research can strengthen long-term growth, and sudden deep cuts during a recession can deepen the downturn. A sound plan distinguishes productive spending from programs that cannot be sustained, and it phases changes in.
• "Just tax the rich." Progressives argue the gap can be closed mainly by raising taxes on high earners and corporations. The arithmetic does not support that, and even leading center-left economists concede it. Brookings economist William Gale has said the fiscal problem is so large that Washington "can't finance it just on the backs of the wealthy," and his own plan calls for broad new taxes that he acknowledges the middle class would feel.²⁴ Any honest plan has to deal with entitlement spending, which is where the long-term growth in costs actually lies.

These objections do not defeat the case for debt reduction. They define the challenge, and America has met larger ones.

Conclusion: A Choice, Not a Fate

The national debt is often discussed as if it were the weather, something that simply happens to us. American history tells a different story. Jefferson's Treasury paid down the Revolutionary debt. Jackson paid it off entirely. The generation after the Civil War retired a large share of its war debt. The 1920s cut the debt by more than a third. The postwar generation reduced a debt burden larger than the entire economy to less than a quarter of it. And within living memory, a Democratic president and a Republican Congress produced four consecutive surpluses.

Each of those successes required the same things: revenue that covered the government's ordinary spending, the discipline to let emergency spending end, rules that forced hard choices, and leaders willing to treat debt as an obligation to the next generation. Today's challenge is larger, and the easy tools of the past are gone. That makes discipline more important, not less.

The United States can reduce its national debt. It has done it before. Its history is a reason to start the work, not an excuse to put it off.

Further Reading

For more on what really reduced the World War II debt, see my earlier article: Did High Top Marginal Tax Rates Pay Off the WWII Debt? What Postwar History Teaches About Today's $40 Trillion Debt.

---

Notes

1. Joint Economic Committee Republicans, "Monthly Debt Update," October 2026, using U.S. Treasury data. jec.senate.gov ↩
2. American Action Forum, "U.S. Treasury: FY 2026 Deficit Totaled $2 Trillion," October 18, 2026, based on the Treasury's final Monthly Treasury Statement for fiscal 2026. americanactionforum.org ↩
3. Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036, February 2026. cbo.gov/publication/61882 ↩
4. "Budget deficit, government spending: CBO report," Fortune, February 26, 2026, reporting CBO's long-term budget outlook for 2026–2056. fortune.com ↩
5. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Fiscal Data, "Historical Debt Outstanding" (annual, 1790 to present), source for the dollar figures for 1801, 1809, 1829, 1866, 1893, 1919, and 1930. fiscaldata.treasury.gov ↩
6. TreasuryDirect, "Historical Debt Outstanding," U.S. Department of the Treasury, on the War of 1812 and the 1835 payoff. treasurydirect.gov ↩
7. YiLi Chien and Ashley H. Stewart, "What Does History Reveal about Reducing the National Debt Burden?," Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, On the Economy, April 6, 2023, summarizing George J. Hall and Thomas J. Sargent, "Interest Rate Risk and Other Determinants of Post-WWII US Government Debt/GDP Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 3, no. 3 (2011). stlouisfed.org; doi:10.1257/mac.3.3.192 ↩
8. Julien Acalin and Laurence Ball, "Did the United States Really Grow Out of Its World War II Debt?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2026. doi:10.1257/mac.20230357. Earlier version: NBER Working Paper 31577 (2023). ↩
9. "Charles Zwick, 91, helped engineer 1969 federal surplus," Honolulu Star-Advertiser, April 25, 2018. staradvertiser.com ↩
10. Linda J. Bilmes, "A Harvard professor who helped Bill Clinton balance the budget in the 1990s says Kevin McCarthy will struggle to keep that promise," Fortune (via The Conversation), February 1, 2023. fortune.com ↩
11. William G. Gale and Tayae Rogers, "Back to the Future: Can the Government Reduce Its Debt Again?," Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, TaxVox, August 8, 2024. Source for the 1990s figures, the growth and labor-force data, defense spending, and the Social Security comparison. taxpolicycenter.org ↩
12. H. Res. 981, 119th Congress, resolution expressing support for a deficit target of 3 percent of GDP. congress.gov ↩
13. Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, "Getting to 3%." crfb.org ↩
14. Romina Boccia, Cato Institute, written statement to the House Budget Committee, March 26, 2026. budget.house.gov ↩
15. Government of Sweden, A Review of the Surplus Target, summary of SOU 2016:67, Surplus Target Committee, 2016. government.se ↩
16. Social Security Administration, "Full Retirement Age" chart (archived). ssa.gov (archived) ↩
17. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, "Households and Nonprofit Organizations; Net Worth, Level" (TNWBSHNO), Z.1 Financial Accounts, Q2 2026. alfred.stlouisfed.org ↩
18. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, "Households and Nonprofit Organizations; Net Worth as a Percentage of Disposable Personal Income" (annual). The 1946 dollar comparison is the author's estimate from this series. fred.stlouisfed.org ↩
19. "China's economy: export-led growth, record trade surplus, real estate crash and deflation," Fortune, February 1, 2026. fortune.com ↩
20. "Logan Wright on China's Financial Decay," The Wire China, October 4, 2026. See also Logan Wright, Broken China (Polity). thewirechina.com ↩
21. "Russia's Economy in 2026: More War, Slower Growth and Higher Taxes," The Moscow Times, 2026. themoscowtimes.com ↩
22. "Amid geopolitical uncertainty, China trims US Treasury holdings to 18-year low," The Star, June 21, 2026, citing U.S. Treasury data for April 2026. thestar.com.my ↩
23. Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), "Europe to source two-thirds of its LNG imports from US in 2026 as dependence deepens," May 13, 2026. ieefa.org ↩
24. William Gale, interview, "How to Reduce the National Debt with Bipartisan Support," Knowledge at Wharton, June 4, 2019. knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu ↩