Debt Rises: The Government Will Soon Spend More On Interest Than on The Military

As debt and interest rates rise, the government is about to be in a disastrous situation. Very soon, they will spend more money paying interest on the national debt than they will on the bloated military budget.

By the year 2023, interest payments on the national debt could surpass the entire budget for the Department of Defense, according to the New York Times. The ballooning debt is being spurred by an inability by those who claim authority over the economy to stop spending and the hike in interest rates. With more and more money being robbed from the unborn and spent by the government and more going toward interest, political “leaders” will find it harder to do pretty much anything.

While many are worried about the crumbling infrastructure, others say it’ll be more difficult to make emergency moves like pulling the economy out of future recessions. Which is strange, because the government causes recessions and doesn’t “fix” them, they simply put band-aids on gaping wounds. This mentality that the government will save people when they are $21 trillion in debt is a delusional one, other economic experts have said.

In about 5 years, more than $900 billion in interest payments will be due annually, easily outpacing spending on several other socialist programs. Already the fastest-growing major government expense, the cost of interest is on track to hit $390 billion next year, nearly 50 percent more than in 2017, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The inability of the government to rein in spending will eventually result in an economic meltdown the world had never seen nor is prepared for. The government literally cannot steal enough money from producers in the form of taxes to get out from under this problem anymore.

“It’s very much something to worry about,” said C. Eugene Steuerle, a fellow at the Urban Institute and a co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington. “Everything else is getting squeezed.”  Gradually rising interest rates would have made borrowing more expensive even without any additional debt, but the government never cuts spending. In fact, Republicans, who are supposed to be “fiscally conservative,”, while holding all three houses of government,  approved a budget bill in February that raised spending by $300 billion over two years.  All of these problems will add to the financial pressure.

The deficit is expected to total nearly $1 trillion next year for the first time since 2012, under the Obama Administration.

Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has even begun to sound the alarm on the government’s spending problem. At a recent round-table discussion with reporters at the Brookings Institution, Bernanke, former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson, and Timothy Geithner all expressed concerns that the next economic crisis will come with policymakers being unable to do anything about it. –SHTFPlan

The trade war will also make things difficult for those already struggling to make ends meet as jobs are lost and prices are raised to cover the cost of tariffs. The economy’s immediate future is looking incredibly bleak.