Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was widely mocked 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, describing the debt as a "wake-up call" and attributing it to "unaffordable socialist policies."

A Community Note was quickly added to his post, reminding readers that Grassley had voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill just weeks earlier. The law raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that it will add $3.4 trillion to deficits over 10 years. That backdrop made Grassley’s post part of a broader fight over which party owns the federal debt problem, even as lawmakers continue to debate spending, taxes and borrowing limits.

"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 criticism drew an immediate wave of backlash 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 pointed to 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."

Brendan Duke, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former Senate Finance Committee staffer, also criticized Grassley’s comment.

"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," Duke said.

Max Steele, senior communications director at Everytown for Gun Safety, noted on X that "The US debt was $533 billion when Chuck Grassley was first elected to federal office in 1975."

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 about $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.