Mark Moss breaks down when U.S. interest payments on the national debt overtook defense spending. By 2026, interest hits $970 billion versus $916 billion for defense. The problem: tightening rates to fight inflation only makes the debt service worse.
The interest payments, so that's the amount of money that I owe on the debt that I've already taken. The debt's already, it's already gone, it's already been spent. And he's saying the interest payments now exceed the amount of money spent on the Department of War. Just to put this into perspective for a second, I think the United States spends more money on defense, Department of War, than the next 10 countries all combined. All right, so that's a big number. Now again, he's right. If we look at the federal outlays by budget, we can see the year interest past defense. Now what we have here is the national defense is in white and the red is the net interest. And you can see we started creeping up here, 2023, 2024, 2025, we surpassed it. Here we are, 2026, we're well over the top of it. All right, now again, this is net interest, all right? And I'm using that interest here on purpose. If I use the gross number, this crossing happens a year earlier and the gap is $259 billion instead of 7. So this is the, this is the conservative version, but it still crosses. And then look what happens, you know, after 2025, right here, interest was 970 against only 916. And so you can see this is a trend, it's going one direction. You can't tighten your way out of a problem where the tightening is the cost. That's the problem.
