During the U.S. Budget’s Fiscal Year 2024 (October 1, 2023-September 30, 2024), net interest on the U.S. government debt—at $881.6 billion—was larger than military spending, which was $841.8 billion, reportedly the first time in America’s 235 years of history.
When President Donald Trump assumed office in 2017, the annual net interest on the U.S. federal debt for that fiscal year was $262.6 billion. When he left office in 2021, the net interest on the federal debt was $352.3 billion, an increase of $90 billion over his four years in office. When Biden assumed the Presidency in 2021, the net interest on the federal debt was the same as the ending level when Trump left office, at $352.3 billion, and it has since more than doubled, reaching $881.2 billion, an increase of more than $500 billion.
