Elon Musk endorses Warren Buffett’s famed five‑minute plan to tackle the national debt, declaring “This is the way”

(SeaPRwire) –   The national debt is projected to hit $40 trillion in the near future if current trends continue, a figure that has drawn attention from the world’s richest individual.

Elon Musk has now joined other notable figures—including Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—in backing a method for reducing the national debt, originally proposed by former Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.

“I can end the deficit in five minutes,” Buffett stated during a 2011 interview with CNBC. “You just pass a law that says anytime there’s a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection. Now, you’ve got the incentives in the right place.”

Musk fully endorsed this approach. In June, he shared the interview on X with the caption: “This is the way.”

In the previous year, the national debt increased by $2.6 trillion, bringing the total to $38.9 trillion—or 124% of the U.S. economy—according to data from the U.S. Treasury. Recently, public liabilities, which represent the portion of the national debt owed to individuals and entities outside the government, surpassed the size of the economy for the first time since World War II. Additionally, interest payments alone cost over $22 billion per week, as reported by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Buffett is not alone in raising concerns about the growing national debt.

Recently, the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) warned that the average interest rate on the national debt could exceed economic growth by fiscal year 2031. “Once interest rates exceed the growth rate…primary deficits will lead debt to grow indefinitely,” the CRFB cautioned in a March 9 blog post. The organization also supports the target of keeping the deficit at or below 3% of GDP.

While most members of Congress have not embraced the idea of being removed from office due to excessive deficits, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a resolution in January aimed at reducing the deficit to 3% of GDP.

What capping the deficit would actually do

In 2024, under the Biden administration, Buffett predicted that higher taxes on businesses were likely. “They may decide that someday they don’t want the fiscal deficit to be this large, because that has some important consequences. And they may not want to decrease spending a lot, and they may decide they’ll take a larger percentage of what we earn, and we’ll pay it,” he said at Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholders meeting in May 2024.

At that time, the national debt exceeded $34 trillion, or 122% of GDP. Buffett has consistently opposed efforts by companies to exploit the smallest tax loopholes for savings. Since the first Trump administration, corporate tax rates have been set at a maximum of 21%, down from the previous 35%; this rate remained unchanged during the Biden administration.

“My best speculation is that U.S. debt will be acceptable for a very long time, because there is not much alternative,” Buffett remarked.

A version of this story was originally published on .com on March 17, 2026.