We can guesstimate the interest payments on the Federal debt by Jan, 2025. Most Federal debt shifted into short-term bills during Clinton's administration to create the illusion of a budget surplus and that's held true for most of the recent past. The average interest rate was 1.60% in 2021, and total payment was $575 billion.
Existing debt is mostly in short-term bills, the optimum refinance right now is 10 year Treasury at 3.7%, or 2.3X higher interest:
$575B x 2.3 = $1.3 trillion.
And the debt increased at least 10% since 2021, so
$1.3 trillion x 110% = $1.4 trillion.
One third of the "$4 trillion budget" will go to interest payments, haha. No wonder there's no budget ceiling, hey? It should be an interesting sixteen months.
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