In last week’s election, Americans rejected the status quo in the federal government and asked Republicans to once again take the reins.

On Friday, the Treasury issued another reminder of the cost of doing nothing to change course. The national debt reached 36 trillion dollars – less than four months after exceeding 35 trillion dollars.

Evenly distributed, that means every American is now six numbers in redthanks to the decisions made in Washington, DC, over recent decades. The path forward does not look better. The federal government is on course to run multi-trillion dollar deficits for the foreseeable future – and that’s the rosy scenario, assuming no recessions, wars, pandemics and the like. Measured against the size of the US economy is the debt approaching the record takes place during the last years of World War II. The rising debt means higher annual interest payments which will complicate the federal budget, likely require higher taxes and make everyone poorer.

There is a lot of blame for this mess. Yes, former President Donald Trump added $8 trillion to the debt during his four years in office. Yes, President Joe Biden has done almost as much damage—despite a bunch of insincere and memory-sapping talk about curbing deficits in his first two years.

What is more important is what will happen next. The American people made a clear choice in the election. Trump and his Republicans will have full control of the federal budget for at least the next two years. Can they break the recent trends and at least slow the growth of the national debt?

Skepticism is justified. Recently, a divided government has been the only hope for spending restraint. At the same time, the promises Trump made on the campaign trail translates into higher spending, bigger deficits and more debtaccording to assessments by independent groups such as the Penn Wharton Budget Model. Trump avoided questions about the debt during campaign and does not have a plan to reduce spendingeven though he has promised lots of tax cuts (a recipe for higher deficits and more borrowing).

If Trump’s second term is to be shorter fiscally reckless than his firsthe may have to abandon some of his most ambitious plans, like a mass deportation proposal that has “no price tag,” in Trump’s estimation.

Still, Trump says some of the right things — and one of his first acts as president-elect was to task Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy promote government efficiencywhich May or maybe not converted into spending cuts.

At least some Republicans in Congress also see the need for fiscal restraint.

“It’s time for significant changes to our spending habits, and that won’t be achieved with another reckless and lazy (continued resolution),” Rep. Andy Biggs (R–Ariz.) posted on X soon after that, news of the $36 trillion national debt broke. Biggs, like some of his allies in the House GOP, has pushed for Congress to actually complete a full budget, something lawmakers have not done since 1996.

Late. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), who has pushed for cuts without much success in recent years, wrote in a letter to his Senate colleagues on Thursday that he is “deeply concerned about our nation’s fiscal health and the growing federal debt.”

The goal for the next two years should just be to stabilize debt growth. That alone will require a massive effort. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that it would take almost $8 trillion in budget cuts (spread over the 10-year budget window used by the Congressional Budget Office and other official estimates) to keep the debt from growing faster than the economy over the long term.

That’s the task voters have set before Republicans, who are in full control of the agenda for at least the next two years. The ultimate responsibility really lies with Trump, given that so much of the GOP is now dependent on his whims. Passing the $36 trillion threshold so close to Trump’s decisive election victory provides a convenient baseline against which to measure his second term. In four years, how high will that figure be?