August 20, 2026
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Michael's Daily Notes
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We’ve now topped $40 trillion.
That’s the gross federal debt—$40.05 trillion as of Tuesday, according to the Treasury Department’s daily debt report, released Wednesday. It arrived months ahead of forecasts, partly swelled by the government’s obligation to refund roughly $160 billion in Trump-era tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, plus interest.
The statutory borrowing cap is $41.1 trillion. Forecasters expect us to collide with it sometime next year—perhaps as early as late winter.
Nobody can picture $40 trillion. That is why the Peter G. Peterson Foundation is worth your attention: it turns abstraction into something you can feel.
In January 2023, I interviewed Michael Peterson, the foundation’s CEO and the son of its founder, when the gross debt stood at $31.4 trillion. His father, Peter G. Peterson, was so concerned about the country’s fiscal future that in 2007 he committed $1 billion to create a foundation devoted to educating the public about it.
Michael Peterson gave me two numbers: roughly $94,000 in gross federal debt for every American, and about $1 billion a day in interest.
Three and a half years later, the gross-debt-per-person figure is roughly $117,000. Federal interest costs now run about $2.8 billion a day. Same two yardsticks. The interest bill has nearly tripled. That is not a projection. It is the receipt.
What is remarkable is not merely the borrowing. It is the silence.
The last major bipartisan effort to confront this problem was Simpson-Bowles. In 2010, its plan won support from 11 of 18 commissioners—three votes short of the threshold needed to send it to Congress for an up-or-down vote. Sixteen years, presidents of both parties, and a succession of Congresses later, no comparable plan has taken hold.
Why? Because the arithmetic eventually requires choices on Social Security, Medicare, defense, taxes—or all four. And those are choices almost nobody seeking reelection wants to state plainly.
Meanwhile, interest is approaching $1 trillion this year—money spent not on defense, infrastructure, research, or benefits, but on servicing yesterday’s borrowing.
We are financing the financing.
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DAILY POLL
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Is the Natalie Harp story much ado about nothing?
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TOP STORY
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The U.S. national debt has topped $40 trillion, an unprecedented milestone equal to roughly $117,000 per person, as rapidly mounting borrowing and interest costs underscore the country’s worsening fiscal outlook and the long-term economic consequences of continuing on its current path.
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TODAY'S YOUTUBE
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SPONSORED BY PARX CASINO
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IN OTHER NEWS
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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are moving back to Britain with Archie and Lilibet, establishing a private U.K. home while keeping properties abroad, a major family shift that brings Harry closer to King Charles but does not signal a return to royal duties.
The U.S. military is quietly moving millions of barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz each day, using a protected southern shipping corridor that officials say has restored roughly half of pre-war oil traffic despite continued Iranian drone and missile attacks.
Merck and Moderna say their experimental cancer vaccine helped keep melanoma from returning or spreading in a major trial of more than 1,100 patients, offering promising evidence that personalized vaccines could become a new way to fight cancer.
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A MESSAGE FROM COMCAST
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Democrat Abdul El-Sayed leads Republican Mike Rogers 46% to 39% in a new Michigan Senate poll, with El-Sayed showing strong support among Democrats and a sizable advantage with independent voters in the closely watched race for the state’s open Senate seat.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is putting new limits on AI data centers, saying developers must have local support, protect the environment and provide their own power as concerns grow that large projects are disrupting communities and putting added pressure on the state’s resources.
Corporal punishment remains legal in public schools in 15 states, with nearly 32,000 cases reported nationwide in one school year, even as research links physical discipline to increased aggression and other problems and most states have moved to ban the practice.
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CARTOONS
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by Steve Breen
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MORE NEWS
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Pennsylvania's attorney general charged 14 people in an alleged cocaine-trafficking ring tied to Penn State students and fraternities, including Pittsburgh attorney Paul Robinson, an equity member of Meyer Darragh, who faces a felony tampering count.
Newsmax host Greta Van Susteren says she regrets asking Darline Graham about Taiwan and the South China Sea after Graham admitted she was not well-informed on national security, arguing the media unfairly focused on the viral answer instead of the rest of the debate.
President Trump is set to sit down with his former lawyer Michael Cohen for an interview, marking a surprising reunion years after Cohen became a fierce Trump critic and key witness in the criminal trial that resulted in Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts.
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For the Left
President Trump celebrated Alex Vindman’s loss in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary, calling him a “treasonous creep” and demanding his prosecution after Angie Nixon defeated Vindman despite raising far less money, winning about 56% of the vote.
For the Right
President Trump’s aide Natalie Harp reportedly worked at the White House for more than a year without a security clearance, despite her close access to the president, raising concerns among security officials before Trump intervened and she completed the required paperwork.
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