The US national debt has hit $38 trillion, now equal to 100% of GDP, and is growing faster than the economy itself—a trajectory that watchdog groups warn makes "some form of crisis almost inevitable."

Those aren't partisan talking points. They're the conclusions of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonpartisan think tank that has been tracking government finances for decades. Their latest report reads like a credit rating agency's nightmare: The US is "deeply indebted" with finances on an "unsustainable long-term trajectory."

The numbers are stark. Annual interest payments on the debt now exceed $1 trillion, consuming 18% of all federal revenue. That's more than the US spends on Medicaid. More than education, transportation, and veterans' benefits combined. It's money that buys nothing except the privilege of continuing to borrow more money.

And it's accelerating. Debt held by the public—the portion that matters for fiscal sustainability—stands at roughly $31 trillion. Current projections have that number reaching $50 trillion by 2034, even under optimistic economic assumptions. Not a recession. Not a war. Not a pandemic. Just baseline growth in entitlement spending and interest costs.

Here's the problem: When your debt grows faster than your economy, the math eventually breaks. It's the same reason you can't sustain credit card debt that grows faster than your salary. Eventually, you run out of income to service the debt, and lenders stop lending.

For the US, "eventually" could arrive faster than politicians expect. The CRFB outlines six potential crisis scenarios, each progressively worse:

1. Financial Crisis: Interest rates spike uncontrollably as bond markets lose confidence. Banking system seizures. Credit markets freeze. Think 2008, but with the government unable to mount a rescue because it's the source of the crisis.

2. Inflation Crisis: The Federal Reserve prints money to service debt, debasing the currency. Your paycheck nominally stays the same while prices double. Savings evaporate.

3. Currency Crisis: The dollar loses reserve currency status. International trade becomes expensive. Import prices skyrocket. America's geopolitical leverage disappears.

4. Default Crisis: The unthinkable: The US government fails to pay bondholders. Global markets collapse. Every asset priced in dollars reprices overnight.

5. Austerity Crisis: Forced spending cuts to service debt trigger severe recession. GDP contracts 3% or more. Unemployment soars. Social programs collapse.

6. Gradual Crisis: Decades of economic stagnation as debt service crowds out productive investment. Japan's "lost decades" but without Japan's social cohesion. Growth averages 0.5% annually for twenty years.

Pick your poison. None of the options are good.

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio frames the choice bluntly: "Do you print money or do you let a debt crisis happen?" Either way, someone pays. Either savers through inflation or borrowers through default.

So why isn't Washington panicking? Because the crisis isn't here yet. Treasury bonds still sell. Interest rates, while higher than 2020, remain historically manageable. The dollar remains the global reserve currency. Every warning sign is yellow, not red.

But yellow lights turn red quickly when the underlying fundamentals are this poor. Greece went from manageable debt to crisis in under two years during the 2010s. The UK nearly collapsed in 2022 after a poorly-timed tax cut spooked bond markets. These things happen fast.

The US has advantages Greece and the UK don't: We print the world's reserve currency. We have the world's largest economy. We have deep, liquid bond markets. But those advantages aren't permanent. They're conditional on maintaining credibility.

Fixing this requires politically impossible choices: Raise taxes, cut spending, or accept lower growth. Every serious fiscal plan involves some combination of all three. No politician wants to campaign on higher taxes and benefit cuts.

So we wait. The debt grows. Interest payments consume more revenue. The options narrow. And eventually—probably not this year, possibly not this decade, but eventually—the math stops working.

The numbers don't lie. And they're telling us the bill is coming due.