Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on Friday warned that the growing national debt is “a ticking time bomb” and he called on his fellow lawmakers to do “much more.”
The U.S. national debt crossed 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of the first quarter, the first time the debt crossed that line since 1946. The debt surpassed $39 trillion in March, a mere five months after it reached $38 trillion.
Roy told Fox Business’s Cheryl Casone that the debt is “a ticking time bomb and that some of us have been talking about for a long time.”
“Now, thankfully, we’ve taken some strides over the last couple of years to do something about it,” he said. “[With] the Big Beautiful Bill, we had some pretty significant cuts to some mandatory spending. And over the last three years we’ve held discretionary funding spending basically flat.”
He added that while that was a “win in Washington, but for the American people generally, we need to do much more.” Roy said he has called for deeper spending reductions and “returning power to the states and the people.”
“Unfortunately, you know, the government is sort of on autopilot at times,” he continued, before warning that if the debt continues to balloon, “we’re going to destroy our country.”
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released data on the national debt reaching 100.2 percent of GDP on Thursday. Debt held by the public on March 31 was $31.27 trillion.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned earlier this year that if remained unchanged, the debt held by the public will rise to 108 percent of GDP by 2030 and 120 percent by 2036.
Republican lawmakers entered the new Trump administration with the aim of not adding more to the federal deficit. There was initially no agreement as to whether or not extending the 2017 tax cuts would add to the debt, with some calling for cuts on spending that would pay for some of Trump’s priorities.
Calls for Congress to rein in deficit spending carried into 2026, most recently when a group of GOP senators proposed pushing forward with a bill to spend $400 million for the construction of the White House ballroom, a project advanced by the Trump administration.
“I don’t know why you would do it” with taxpayer money “if it’s all funded,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) told NBC News last month. “We have $39 trillion in debt. Maybe we ought to stop spending money.”
Scott previously told The Hill in a statement that tax dollars were not necessary for the project, given the president said it was “already paid for with private funds.”
Some senators have also pressured the administration on tax dollars being spent on the U.S.-Israeli conflict in Iran. White House Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought declined to give an estimate of that cost when asked by senators last month.
The Pentagon’s acting Chief Financial Officer Jules Hurst III told members of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that the war in Iran has so far cost the U.S. $25 billion.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN that he’s heard the cost is upwards of $50 billion.
“I’m going to try to make some inquiry into what they based their estimate on, because $25 billion is considerably below all the other estimates I’ve been seeing for the past two months,” King told the outlet.
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