The US is in a league of its own when it comes to its debt burden, as rating agencies bemoan ‘long-running deterioration’ in fiscal governance

The U.S. is now unmatched in a regrettable category. Among rich and spend-happy nations that are globally seen as safe investments, the U.S. beats out the competition when it comes to the size of its debt burden, as the nation’s public liabilities have exceeded the size of its economy for the first time since World War II. On Thursday, the nonpartisan watchdog Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) announced that U.S. debt held by the public, estimated to be $31.27 trillion, officially surpassed the country’s annual GDP of $31.22 trillion in March, basing its analysis on new data released this week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Rising debt comes with a long list of economic risks, including the threat that the cost of servicing that debt might crowd out other essential government spending. Another consequence would be a deterioration of the country’s once-top tier credit rating, a scenario that could lead to higher borrowing costs and even more constrained government spending. After the CRFB’s announcement, one of the world’s foremost rate-setters warned how close that scenario is to becoming reality. The U.S.’s credit rating—a measure of a country’s creditworthiness and expected ability to repay debt—risks slipping due to its high debt burden, analysts from Fitch Ratings, a rating agency, warned in a report Thursday. Fitch currently maintains the U.S. at a AA+ rating, having downgraded it from its premier AAA rating in 2023 due to continued political run-ins over the U.S. debt ceiling that repeatedly risked sparking a default on debt. “Structurally large fiscal deficits will keep the U.S.’s debt burden far above that of other ‘AA’ category sovereigns,” the analysts wrote. The U.S. remains in AA territory largely thanks to the dollar’s reserve‑currency status, its deep capital markets, and continued prospects pointing at long‑term growth. But the analysts warned that years of fiscal malpractice were a growing constraint on the rating. “The U.S.’s ‘A