According to the Treasury department, our payments on the interest every fiscal year has never been larger than $400 billion dollars (usually down towards $300 billion), until 2006 with Bush's Medicare drug benefit and the increased costs of the Afghanistan campaign.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm
2007 saw us have $429 billion in deficit-related interest spending.
2008 saw us have $451 billion.
2009 saw us have $383 billion.
So far, in FY 2010, we have paid $164 billion in 4 months (October 2009 to Jan 2010). Simply multiplying by 3, we get $492 billion. However, that is too naive a final number.
Obama is proposing a $3.8 trillion dollar budget. That's an additional $900 billion of debt over the $2.9 trillion dollar budget that we didn't have in 2008.
That's $900 billion on the national debt, not the deficit. The interest payment on that, at perhaps 3%, is $27 billion dollars.
That's more than the entire budget of NASA, in debt obligation. NASA has less than $20 billion for its operating budget.
So, if Obama gets his budget, or even close to it, we will breach the $500 billion debt obligation threshold in our budget.
That makes the deficit payments (and really just the INTEREST payments on the deficit) a larger line item on the annual budget than the Department of Defense. The DoD operates with $481 billion dollars.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/rewrite/budget/fy2008/defense.html
This cannot stand. The center will not hold.
The interest component of our nation's annual budget will be the second largest item on our budget.
With DoD at $500 billion, the interest at $500 billion and Social Security at $650 billion (http://www.socialsecurity.gov/budget/FactCard2009.pdf), that's $1.65 trillion out of $2.9 trillion of the Bush underfunded budget. When we start to consider what it means to borrow $500 billion to $1 trillion dollars a year and adding that to our existing interest payments as a component of the budget, it quickly becomes apparent that this cannot stand.
Adding insult to injury is the well documented tradition in Washington to fund projects and NEVER de-fund them. If the budget for one year is $3.9 trillion, then it will be at least $3.9 trillion forever more. That's a trillion of borrowing every year. And an additional $30 billion of interest (at 3%) tacked onto last year's interest bill. And, whatever capital payment might be in place against the actual working debt.
Fight, people. Take this up with Congress, with the President. With your governor and state legislature. Beware any deficits in any budgets. We are on such a financial precipice that our country is in jeopardy. Drunk-spending Washington will not stop.
