Interest Payments On the National Debt Will Soon Surpass Our Entire Defense Spending

Brittany M. Hughes | September 26, 2018
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While the nation is embroiled in a virtual fist-fight over whether a Supreme Court nominee ran a secret gang-rape ring in high school that no one ever reported to the police in 35 years, there’s another, even bigger threat looming on the not-too-distant horizon: the national debt.

According to CNBC, the U.S. government is poised to begin spending more on interest on the national debt than it does the entire military. Based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, the feds are expected to cough up a whopping $390 billion just on interest payments next year alone, and will soon be paying more in interest on its debt than it spends on defense, Medicaid or children's programs. 

In fact, interest payments on the nation’s $25 trillion (and climbing) debt are expected to triple over the next 10 years to more than $900 billion annually.

“The run-up in borrowing costs is a one-two punch brought on by the need to finance a fast-growing budget deficit, worsened by tax cuts and steadily rising interest rates that will make the debt more expensive,” CNBC explained.

While the GOP’s recent tax cuts have given businesses a much-needed boost, the lack of accompanying spending cuts is creating an ever-widening gap between increasing expenditures and decreasing revenue, lowering unemployment but also ballooning the national deficit to more than $1 trillion by the end of next year.

Payments on our interest currently make up about 6.6 percent of the entire federal budget. CNBC predicts those interest payments will grow to comprise a full 13 percent of the federal budget within the next decade, surpassing national spending on Medicaid and the military.

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