U.S. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) speaks to reporters in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump saying he may temporarily drop the nomination of Todd Blanche to be U.S. attorney general, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 30, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) drew ridicule Wednesday after blaming "socialist policies" for the national debt reaching $40 trillion, a milestone critics said he helped create.
The Iowa Republican posted on X Thursday morning, calling the debt a "wake-up call" and blaming "unaffordable socialist policies."
Readers immediately attached a Community Note to his post, reminding him that he had voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill just weeks earlier. The law raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects it will add $3.4 trillion to deficits over 10 years.
"U.S debt hit $40T. It's a wake-up call 4 America Voters hv (sic) 40 trillion reasons 2 reject unaffordable socialist policies American prosperity REQUIRES fiscal discipline," Grassley wrote.
The longtime senator's complaint drew an immediate wave of criticism from commentators across the political spectrum.
"Do these people really think Trump and themselves aren't complicit?" hip-hop artist and right-leaning commentator Jason Heinrichs wrote on X. "The lack of self-awareness is astonishing."
Conservative commentator Amanda Carpenter also weighed in on the $152 billion in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement that Grassley voted for in the same bill.
"Who voted to give ICE $152 billion dollars?" Carpenter asked on X. "How did the budget-busting Big Beautiful Bill get passed? I really wish we could get to the bottom of these debt questions."
"Personally, I wouldn't have written this if I had been the chair of the Senate tax-writing committee who helped shepherd the Bush tax cuts, but that's just me," Brendan Duke, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former Senate Finance Committee staffer, pointed out.
"The US debt was $533 billion when Chuck Grassley was first elected to federal office in 1975," Max Steele, senior communications director at Everytown for Gun Safety, wrote on X.
Grassley was elected to the U.S. House in November 1974 and took office in January 1975. Treasury records show the gross federal debt stood at approximately $533 billion at the end of that fiscal year — consistent with Steele's figure — meaning the debt has grown roughly 74-fold during Grassley's 51 years in Washington.
According to congressional records, Grassley voted to raise the debt ceiling six times while President George W. Bush was in office.