US to spend more on debt interest than military or healthcare in five years - Polidicks

https://www.newsweek.com/defense-debt-us-spending-trump-medicaid-treasury-federal-health-care-interest-1210907 U.S. government spending on the interest costs of rising federal debt will soon force lawmakers to choose between competing spending on health care and education programs, according to the Wall Street Journal. Interest costs on the 2017 federal debt of $263 billion accounted for 6.6 percent of all U.S. government spending and a 1.4 percent share of the country's GDP. But the Congressional Budget Office predicts interest spending will spike to $915 billion by 2028, or about 3.1 percent of the gross domestic product. Guided by Congress' federal spending boost of $300 billion earlier this year and the Trump administration's individual income tax cuts, a divided Congress will soon be forced to spend more on interest than Medicaid, national defense and a host of other government programs. Analysts note the $1.5 trillion tax cut enacted last year and the two-year budget agreement to boost federal spending by $300 billion is pushing up deficits. But at the same time, interest expenses on the federal debt are climbing as bond yields rise. By 2020, the government is on track to spend more on interest than it spends on Medicaid, and by 2023, more than on national defense, and by 2025, the government will spend more on debt interest than every nondefense discretionary federal program combined. In the next five years, about 70 percent of federal debt will mature and need refinancing at higher interest rates. “The fact that interest is the fastest growing part of the budget and is on track to eclipse other important pieces of the budget—for instance, spending on children—is going to cause more hesitation just to charge every single item,” Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for the deficit watchdog group, Responsible Federal Budget, told the Journal. Debt is rapidly becoming a larger share of the country's GDP and federal debt as a share of the country's gross domestic product is expected to rise over the next decade. The current share of 78 percent at the end of this year is the highest since the end of World War II and CBO projections show this share will balloon to 96.2 percent by 2028. According to borrowing estimates, the U.S. Treasury is set to issue twice as much debt in 2018 as it did last year. The Treasury Department announced last month it also expects to issue $1.34 trillion in debt by the end of 2018, the most issued since 2010. The agency said increased spending this year was prompted by outlays for net interest on the public debt rising 20 percent in the 2018 fiscal year.

Lets cut taxes during war. Then rinse and repeat every 4 years please.

F I S C A L R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y

Great looking forward to our inevitable defaulting

I'm not an expert in US budgeting, but is not like USA has had debt before Trump, can't blame him for every decision that has been made in the past

He also specifically said he would reduce the debt. He increased it. It doesn't matter how unrealistic it is, he said he would do it, and the opposite happened.

And I doubt they give a shit, once they're out they'll just blame the Democrats and everyone will believe them and vote for them again in 4/8 years, it's worked before.

They'll pin the deficit and the inevitable tax hike on the democrats.Textbook GOP bullshit, create a problem and pin it on the other guy.

and then take credit for any work done by democrats when they enter office again.

They always pin the problem on the other guy. When things went to shit during Bush's administration they blamed Clinton. When things improved under Obama they said it was because of Bush. But now things are getting better and suddenly it's all the current president's doing because he's "their guy".

Someone should try telling the Republicans how much they could be spending on defence if they dealt with the debt first.

The US won't default. When you got debts as big as these with a comparatively "healthy" economy (in the loosest sense of the word) it's actually a pretty good idea to lend money to the US because they'll just pay you back with MORE money they've borrowed. It's basically a pyramid scheme that goes on forever.

Only an issue when Democrats are in charge.

what tax hike? US companies pay the least in taxes today as do the rich and so on, only the middle class and under ever get taxes raised.

I can't fucking wait to rub this in my parents faces when we lose fucking everything.

Democrats are more fiscally conservative than conservatives at this point

What the hell is wrong with fiscal conservatives in the US. You don’t return budgets to surplus by cutting taxes and increasing spending. Well you can, but you would need to have marginal tax rates already at 70% or more for any tax cuts to actually increase revenue. In the rest of the world, fiscal conservatives at least have enough sense to maintain or increase revenue while reducing spending. Eg here in Australia the Liberal Party is increasing tax collections by auditing people/entities whom under-report income and over-report deductions, and then they decrease spending through ‘efficiency dividends’ or whatever they are called now. American fiscal conservatives are a special breed.