The U.S. takes in about $5.6 trillion a year in taxes and fees. Nearly one of every five of those dollars goes to interest on the debt.
That's $39 trillion in total debt. The money going to interest never touches a road, a school, or a soldier.
And the bill keeps growing fast. It has nearly tripled in just seven years.
Through the first half of this fiscal year, the government paid $529 billion in interest. That works out to about $88 billion a month.
Those numbers put interest as the second-biggest item in the whole budget. It sits right behind Social Security.
Both defense and Medicare rank below it. That was not the case just ten years ago.
The full-year total is on track to cross $1 trillion for the first time in 2026. That's nearly three times the $345 billion paid in 2020 - just six years ago.
By the numbers: That $1 trillion comes to 14 cents of every dollar spent. It also takes 19 cents of every tax dollar coming in.
The bill is up about 7% from last year. It also runs more than 2.5 times the pre-COVID tab of $375 billion in 2019.
The CBO says over 85% of spending growth in the next ten years comes from three areas. Those three are Social Security, health care, and interest.
That leaves just 10% for everything else. Roads, defense, schools, and every other program split a shrinking slice as a result.
The math gets worse from here. The government has to roll over $10 trillion in debt this year.
Each old bond gets swapped for a new one at today's higher rate. Much of that debt was first taken on when rates sat near zero.
Now it reprices at 3% or more. That shift adds tens of billions in new costs each year.
The average rate on all debt is 3.4%, the highest since 2010. At that level, every point higher on $10 trillion adds $100 billion a year.
The long view: The CBO says interest will hit $2.1 trillion a year by 2036. By 2048, it will top Social Security as the biggest budget item.
By 2056, the tab is set to reach $6.6 trillion a year. Those numbers are based on today's rates, which could still climb.
Around 2031, the rate on the debt could pass the rate the economy grows. When that happens, the debt grows faster than output.
At that point the only way to keep up is to borrow more. That loop is what some call a debt spiral.
The CBO's numbers put it less than five years away. No one in Congress has put forward a plan to change that path.
The math keeps moving in one way. Every year the debt grows, the cost of holding it grows with it.
That cost crowds out roads, schools, defense, and every other program. And the longer it runs, the harder it gets to stop.
