There’s Going to Be Hell to Pay

America is piling up civilization-ending debts, and the people incurring them for the sake of feel-good social priorities will be justifiably cursed when the consequences finally come.

It’s just a matter of how long the U.S. Government can stall before the bill finally comes due. Let’s start with the math. The U.S. national debt now exceeds $31.5 trillion. On the day Joe Biden took office, the average interest rate on this debt was around 1.61 percent and interest payments were a mere $549 billion a year. Since then, higher spending and higher interest rates have accelerated the problem at breakneck speed. As older bonds with the historic low interest rates mature and disappear, they are replaced with the higher interest rate bonds now being issued. According to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the annualized interest rate cost in December reached an eye-popping $853 billion.

The older, lower interest rate bonds have kept the average at around 2 percent, still much higher than normal. Econofact.org estimates that “most of the current government debt will mature within the next three years,” which means that the federal government will soon be financing most of its $31.5 trillion debt at market rates-which are approaching 4 to 5 percent. We’re looking at a total annual interest bill of over $1 trillion in the very near future. By comparison, the total tax revenue collected by the U.S. government in 2023 is projected to be $4.6 trillion. As soon as next year, interest will consume approximately one-fifth or even a quarter of all government revenue.

That’s not the bad news.

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