The U.S. national debt is days away from hitting $39 trillion—a milestone that would have dominated policy discussions a decade ago. But in President Donald Trump's two-hour State of the Union address Tuesday night, the longest such speech in American history, the national debt wasn't mentioned once.
Not once.
The omission is striking not just for its political implications, but for what it signals about fiscal policy constraints going forward. At $39 trillion, the national debt now represents roughly 120% of GDP, and the interest payments alone are approaching $1 trillion annually—more than the United States spends on defense.
Let that sink in: The federal government now spends more servicing debt than protecting the country. And the trajectory is getting worse, not better.
President Trump devoted his record-setting speech to infrastructure plans, immigration enforcement, and energy policy—all worthy topics, but none of which addressed the fiscal elephant trampling through the room. The silence is especially notable given that Trump campaigned in 2024 on concerns about America's financial stability.
The numbers are unforgiving. Annual deficits are running at $1.8 trillion despite an economy operating near full employment. When you're borrowing 6% of GDP during an expansion, the question isn't whether there will be a fiscal reckoning—it's when, and how painful.
Interest rates compound the problem. The Federal Reserve held rates elevated to combat inflation, which means the Treasury is now rolling over debt at 4-5% interest rates instead of the near-zero rates that prevailed from 2010 to 2021. Every $1 trillion in new debt now costs $40-50 billion annually just to service—forever.
What makes the State of the Union silence particularly telling is what it reveals about political constraints. Both parties have concluded that voters punish fiscal responsibility more than they reward it. Propose entitlement reform, and you lose elections. Propose tax increases, and you lose elections. So neither side proposes anything, and the debt keeps climbing.
The Congressional Budget Office projects the debt will reach $50 trillion by 2034 under current policy—and that's assuming no recessions, no financial crises, and no major wars. In other words, it assumes a decade of perfect conditions that has never occurred in American history.
For investors and business leaders, the fiscal trajectory matters because it constrains future policy flexibility. When the next crisis hits—and it will—the federal government's ability to respond with massive stimulus will be limited by debt markets' willingness to absorb another several trillion in Treasury issuance. Japan got away with 250% debt-to-GDP because it owns its debt domestically and has deflation. America has neither of those luxuries.
The most likely outcome is continued inflation at 3-4% annually, allowing the government to inflate away the real value of the debt while pretending to maintain fiscal discipline. It's the politically palatable solution: invisible to most voters, but devastating to savers and fixed-income retirees.
The State of the Union is supposed to be an honest accounting of where the country stands. Tuesday's omission of the debt—as it barrels toward $39 trillion—suggests we've given up on honest accounting entirely. The numbers don't lie, but apparently, we've decided not to mention them either.
