Richard Rubin & Anthony DeBarros:
2. Interest costs keep climbing.
By one CBO metric, net interest on the public debt topped $1 trillion for the first time—more than the country spent on Medicare or defense. For every $5 the government collected in taxes, about $1 went to pay interest.
Net interest of $1.029 trillion was up roughly $80 billion, or 8%, from a year earlier. This measure isn’t directly comparable to how net interest is reported in some other CBO or White House accounts, but the differences are relatively small and the trend is consistent.
There is little the government can do in the short term about the rising interest bill. It is the inevitable result of the growing national debt and higher interest rates.