Annual Interest Payments on U.S. Debt Surpass $1 Trillion

How long until the United States goes bankrupt?

The estimated annual interest payments the U.S. is paying on its national debt crossed $1 trillion at the end of October, Bloomberg News reported on November 7. This means 23 percent of America’s tax revenue is going to debt repayment. That does not leave much for Social Security, Medicare, national defense and running the government.

America ran a $1.7 trillion deficit last year. If the government wants to balance a budget, it will either have to slash spending by 28 percent or raise taxes by an unsustainable 38 percent.

Spendthrift nation: These statistics are hard to fathom. For perspective, compare the government to a household by slashing eight zeros from the official figures.

• This is like a middle-class family that earns $44,000 a year—yet spends $61,000 a year.
• This family put a staggering $17,000 on its credit card last year even though it already had $330,000 in credit card debt.
• It pays $10,000 a year in interest.

Coming collapse: Niall Ferguson has been warning for years that nations usually fall apart when the cost of servicing their debts exceeds the cost of defending their borders (a tipping point America recently crossed). This is because nations usually have to drastically slash their defense budgets when interest payments start eating up the lion’s share of their tax revenues. Then these nations’ enemies take advantage of the situation, invading their borders and seizing their valuable assets.

The book of Micah prophesies that just as end-time Israel reaches the zenith of its military power, God will throw down its strongholds and cut off its armaments (Micah 5:10-13). America currently spends more than $800 billion a year on its military, but its $33 trillion national debt is a ticking time bomb.

Learn more: Read “Can America Afford Its Military?”