The outgoing treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, who has presided over a department that saw the national debt soar to a new high of $36.1 trillion, is now saying that she’s worried about “fiscal responsibility” and is suggesting that the deficit “needs to be brought down.”

When Ms. Yellen started her tenure in January of 2021, the national debt stood at $27.7 trillion.   

Ms. Yellen, who will step down from her role when President-elect Trump takes office in just a few weeks, voiced her comments while speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit on Tuesday. The Journal’s chief economic commentator, Greg Ip, probed the treasury department head about the country’s debt, asking if she was “sorry” that she “couldn’t make more progress on that” in the past four years. 

The treasury secretary responded by saying, “Well I am concerned about fiscal sustainability. And I am sorry that we haven’t made more progress. I believe that the deficit needs to be brought down, especially now that we’re in an environment of higher interest rates.” 

President Biden’s administration, from the start of his presidency to June 2024, increased the federal deficit by $4.3 trillion, a non-partisan organization focused on fiscal policy, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, estimates. The GOP-run House Budget Committee, however, has argued that their figure grossly underestimates the administration’s impact on the deficit, placing it instead at $11.6 trillion. 

The looming national debt crisis will soon be the problem of veteran hedge fund manager, Scott Bessent, who was tapped for the job by Trump. Mr. Bessent has expressed his intentions to implement what he calls a “3-3-3” strategy — cutting the budget deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2028, boosting GDP annual growth to 3 percent and increasing domestic oil production by 3 million barrels per day.