(Arlington, Va. – August 25, 2026) In the days since the U.S. national debt surpassed $40 trillion, Concord Action advocates have sent over 2,900 letters to their members of Congress, urging lawmakers to confront the country’s worsening fiscal outlook. View Concord’s grassroots action alert here. This comes on top of over 450,000 letters from Concord’s grassroots activists to Congress demanding fiscal responsibility over the past year.
At $40 trillion, the national debt equals nearly $117,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Continued borrowing will increasingly leave younger and future generations to bear the consequences.
The nearly 3,000 letters reflect Concord Action’s push to turn the $40 trillion milestone into pressure for bipartisan action in Washington.
Concord Action Executive Director Dr. Carolyn Bourdeaux also addressed the milestone in a recent Chicago Tribune op-ed, “At $40 Trillion in Debt, Washington Is Stealing From Younger Generations.”
“This is a question of generational fairness. Younger Americans did not approve decades of debt-financed tax cuts and spending increases. Yet Washington expects them to absorb higher costs, weaker growth and fewer choices. That is intergenerational theft: one generation enjoys the benefits of borrowing while another inherits the bill.
“Both parties own this failure. Republicans cut taxes without paying for them. Democrats expand spending without reliable financing. Each side condemns the other while defending its own exceptions to fiscal discipline. Congress repeats the pattern because lawmakers assume the consequences will arrive after the next election.”
Read Bourdeaux’s Chicago Tribune op-ed.
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About Concord Action
Concord Action is a national grassroots organization working to advance fiscal responsibility through education, advocacy and citizen engagement. The organization mobilizes Americans to urge lawmakers from both parties to address the national debt, pay for their priorities and put the federal budget on a sustainable path.
About Carolyn Bourdeaux
Dr. Carolyn Bourdeaux is the executive director of Concord Action and the Concord Coalition and a former member of Congress from Georgia. An expert in public finance, she previously directed the Georgia Senate Budget and Evaluation Office during the Great Recession and served in Congress from 2021 to 2023, where she worked on bipartisan budget reform, infrastructure, health care and small-business policy.
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