How much debt is US in? How much of our federal tax dollars go just to interest on the debt?

Question

How much debt is US in? How much of our federal tax dollars go just to interest on the debt?

Answer 1

Well we had a budget surplus when Bush took office, now the vast majority of your tax dollars go to funding the illegal and ineffective war and servicing our debt.  Our children will be paying for it for years.

Answer 2

The current deficit is hovering around $9 to $10 TRILLION dollars depending upon whose numbers you use.  The interest on that is on the order of $400 BILLION a year.  That's about equal to the entire Department of Defense's annual budget!

Answer 3

The USA is 9.5 Trillion Dollars in Debt.  This information can be found from the US Treasury Department.  About 9% of the USA expenses are for Interest on the Debt as reported by the GPO outlook.

Note:  No politician, Democrat or Republican, has claimed a Surplus meant we had no debt.  A surplus refers to the budget year.  For example, you earn $100K that year, but only spend 95K, you have a 5K surplus.  This doesn't mean that the $300K you borrowed for your house is paid off.  Like your loans, the government allocates an amount to pay back on their loans (e.g. US Treasury Bills).  Clinton left a budget surplus of about $400 billion; enabling quicker payoff of debt.  Bush gave the surplus back to some of the tax payers, but also increased spending for a war.... quickly causing us to borrow more money (i.e. go into more debt).

Answer 4

a lot

a lot

Answer 5

9 trillion is the national debt defecit right now.  Just learned in sociology a week ago.

Answer 6

WE DID NOT HAVE A SURPLUS.

The Democrats were playing with the numbers. If you are trillions of dollars in debt you do not have a surplus. At rare  times revenue exceeds expenditures. But it doesn't last because the increased taxation that represents that revenue drives the market down. Debt fell 2% in 2000 under Clinton after increasing 13% in his first term.

Today we are at around $9.5 trillion.

Much of that carries an early repayment penalty, so only some is available to pay now. This is where people get disparity in the amounts.

If the government bails out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the debt will grow by about $7 trillion in one fell swoop.

This is debt borrowed against future earnings. Like a giant credit card, buy now, pay later. The government borrowed from itself with the promise to pay itself back later. And since virtually all of the government's money is from taxes, they borrowed from the people. We owe ourselves. And then on top of that we charge ourselves interest, about $400 billion each year.

Spending and debt tend to increase more under Republican control than Democrats, White House, Congress, or both.

This is money owed in taxes to the government by our children and our children's children. And yet the bulk of the voters continue to vote for the establishment. The only reasonable way out is to cut spending.