The United States is now paying nearly $970 billion a year just to service the interest on its $38.8 trillion national debt - a figure that has nearly tripled since 2020 and already exceeds what the federal government spends on national defense or Medicaid, according to a February analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).
The White House of 2036 will have a mammoth task on its hands: It will need to rustle up more than $2 trillion a year to pay the interest on its national debt burden, approximately 5% of the nation's entire economy. According to the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the U.S. government will continue to run a sizeable and growing deficit over the next decade.
At the heart of the row is the legacy of quantitative easing (QE) - the Bank's £895 billion bond-buying programme launched during the global financial crisis and expanded in response to the pandemic.
