Donald Trump Must Fight for Spending Cuts

As I write this piece, our total debt is about to pass the $20 trillion dollar threshold. That's twenty trillion: a 20 followed by 12 zeros. $20,000,000,000,000. No matter how you put it, that's a lot of debt. According to the Treasury Department, gross federal debt totaled $19,948,065 million in November, the latest available data (check out table 6). It breaks down between $14.4 trillion in public debt (what the government owes to foreign and domestic investors) and $5.5 trillion in intra-government debt (what the government owes to other accounts like the Social Security Trust Funds).