Interest on Government Debt Set to Exceed Total Annual Defense Spending
The United States is on pace to spend more to maintain its debt than on its own military. In the third quarter, the federal government spent over $184 billion on interest payments on its debt. That means an annual cost of over $730 billion. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense 2022 budget was about $720 billion.
Interest payments have skyrocketed over the past two years with massive increases in government spending during the COVID-19 pandemic and then due to interest rate hikes enacted by the Federal Reserve in an attempt to curb inflation.
Interest payments in the first three quarters of 2022 reached nearly $500 billion compared to less than $430 billion the year before, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis….