Alex Ossola

First quarter GDP gets a big boost from business spending.

And the U.S.

national debt now exceeds GDP, a once unthinkable threshold.

Plus, the House approves a bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, but not ICE.

It's Thursday, April 30th.

I'm Alex Zosola for The Wall Street Journal.

This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

A new piece of important economic data came in today, GDP.

It rose at a 2% rate in the first quarter.

That's better than the half a percent from the end of last year when government shutdown was a big drag.

But the first quarter was still a bit lower than economists expected.

To dig into what's behind the numbers, I'm joined now by Greg Dacko, chief economist at EY Parthenon.

Greg, the economy's main engine, of course, is consumer spending.

That softened in the first quarter to 1.6% from 1.9% in the fourth quarter.

What's driving those changes and what do we know about how people are spending now?

since the end of February when the Iran war started, gas prices have increased 44%.

Does that mean that we're going to be seeing even more pressure on consumer spending moving forward?

One of the other things we saw in the numbers today was that business spending picked up a lot during the quarter.

It rose more than 10 percent.

What kind of businesses are doing that spending and what are they spending on?