"The ticking time bomb of U.S. debt" draws warnings even from Republicans

[The Financial News]  \r\n
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Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, warned on the 1st local time that the "time bomb of U.S. national debt is ticking."
Roy urged Congress to do more to address the debt problem.
Warnings are mounting that America's severe debt could eventually reduce demand for Treasury bonds, drive interest rates higher, and bring down financial markets and the real economy.
By the end of the first quarter, U.S. national debt had exceeded 100% of GDP. It was the first time since 1946, just after World War II.
The total debt surpassed $39 trillion in March, just five months after reaching $38 trillion.
According to The Hill, Roy told Fox Business that the U.S. debt "time bomb is going off" and that "some of us have been warning about this for a long time."
He noted, however, that efforts to reduce debt have been made over the past few years, and that discretionary fiscal spending was effectively frozen over the past three years.
Still, Roy warned that "unfortunately, the government sometimes runs on autopilot" and that if debt keeps snowballing as it is now, "our country will eventually collapse."
The U.S. national debt, announced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) under the United States Department of Commerce on the 30th of last month, stood at 100.2% of GDP. As of March 31, the total amount lent to the federal government by individuals, banks, foreign governments, and others around the world reached $31.27 trillion.
Earlier, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned that the debt burden would rise to 108% of GDP in 2030 and 120% in 2036.
Hardline Republicans have also clashed with President Donald Trump over debt reduction.
That is because Trump's tax cuts and spending expansion are increasing the debt.
Internal conflict is also brewing over a $400 million bill for construction of a White House banquet hall. After some Republican senators introduced the bill, Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida, criticized it in a recent NBC interview, saying, "The debt has already reached $39 trillion" and "We need to stop spending money now."
Trump's war in Iran has also sharply increased the debt burden. The Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of Korea reported to Congress on the 29th of last month that the cost of the spending had reached $25 billion so far.
However, Sen. Angus King, an independent from the State of Maine who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a CNN interview that the figure he had heard was more than $50 billion. He added that he would investigate what basis the Pentagon used to estimate the cost.
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dympna@fnnews.com Song Kyung-jae Reporter