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Interest Payments Top Defense Spending For First Time In History - Thank You Kamala
Issues & Insights ^ | 10/21/2024 | Editorial Board

Posted on 10/21/2024 10:50:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

SUNNY HOSTIN: Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?

KAMALA HARRIS: There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.


Photo via Flickr by
Kevin KrejciOur National Debt – CC BY 2.0.

On Friday, the Treasury Department released a report showing the kind of impact Harris is talking about. If nothing else does, it should cost her the election.

The latest monthly Treasury report shows spending and revenues for the full fiscal year 2024, which ended in September.

Among the terrible results: The federal deficit topped $1.8 trillion in 2024 — the third highest in history and eclipsed only by the two COVID-19 panic spending years.

That’s not for lack of revenues, which were up by nearly half a trillion dollars this year. Spending under Biden-Harris this fiscal year climbed more than $617 billion – a 10% increase.

But the real shocker is the explosive growth in interest payments on the national debt.

These payments hit $882 billion in FY 2024, the Treasury report says. That’s a 35% jump from last year.

And it’s $8 billion more than we spent on National Defense.


Monthly Treasury Statement for Fiscal Year 2024

This marks the first time in our nation’s history that interest on the debt has exceeded defense spending. And the gap is on track to rapidly widen – with the government spending $200 billion more in interest than in protecting America from her enemies by 2029.

Why the massive run-up in interest costs? Blame Harris’ tie-breaking votes (something for which she routinely brags). Because of them, Biden-Harris added trillions in new spending at a time when the economy had already fully recovered from the COVID-19 panic. That sparked a huge increase in inflation, which in turn drove up interest rates.

More debt and higher interest rates meant a sharp increase in the cost of financing that debt.

How do we know Biden and Harris are to blame? Before they took office, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected net interest payments for the next decade, based on the policies that Donald Trump had in place.

The CBO said that, had Biden not spent us to the poorhouse, interest payments on the national debt this year would have been only $284 billion. (See chart above.)

In other words, Harris and her tie-breaking votes are responsible for a 210% increase in interest costs this year alone.

What would Kamala Harris do about this terrible state of affairs if she were elected president? No one has bothered to ask her.

But we do know that she wants to do exactly what she and Biden have already done: add trillions of dollars of inflationary spending, impose economically ruinous tax hikes, and pile on still more growth-killing regulations.

Harris is right about one thing. It is time to turn the page — before it’s too late.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: debt; defense; interest; spending

1 posted on 10/21/2024 10:50:15 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Cloward-Piven at work.


2 posted on 10/21/2024 10:54:09 AM PDT by Dutch Boy (The only thing worse than having something taken from you is to have it returned broken. )
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To: SeekAndFind

The brutal truth on this is that this is a problem of the federal reserve and their policies. But it is also the problem of Donald Trump and Joe Biden who helped increase the national debt by about $16 trillion and this is why interest payments on the debt up because of the inflation caused by this and the interest rates that had to be raised


3 posted on 10/21/2024 10:54:44 AM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
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To: SeekAndFind

Somewhere it has been said that once service on the debt exceeds military spending an empire collapses.

That was certainly true of the British Empire.


4 posted on 10/21/2024 11:01:35 AM PDT by packagingguy
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To: SeekAndFind

Komrade Kamala wants to “turn the page”.

I agree.

She’s the page we need to turn away from.


5 posted on 10/21/2024 11:02:53 AM PDT by NorthMountain (... the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: SeekAndFind

Mathematically impossible to pay off all the debt. History shows more printing, currency crisis then default.

It’s coming, but when?


6 posted on 10/21/2024 1:50:19 PM PDT by delta7
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To: SeekAndFind

What did we think would happen when we sent our tax base out of the country?


7 posted on 10/21/2024 3:00:03 PM PDT by TwelveOfTwenty (Will whoever keeps asking if this country can get any more insane please stop?)
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