In a battle of the trillion-dollar-a-year outlays, interest on the U.S. Federal debt is now greater than military spending. For the first seven months of Fiscal Year 2024, through April, interest alone on that debt cost the taxpayers $514 billion, while defense budget spending was $498 billion; Medicare spending was $465 billion. The average interest rate on outstanding debt continues rising slowly because, over the past two years, the Federal Reserve Bank has rapidly raised the rates at which new debt has been issued; that average interest charge has gone over 3.5%.