![chart_interest_debt.03[1]](http://www.businessinsider.us/BusinessInsider/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/chart_interest_debt.0311.gif "chart_interest_debt.03[1]")
Blog Editor’ Note: That’s nearly 5 million million dollars and nearly half the current Federal deficit, which continues to rise at an unprecedented rate. But don’t worry, analysts can still find individual pieces of data that sound optimistic.
Unless lawmakers make big changes, the interest Americans will have to pay to keep the country running over the next decade will reach unheard of levels.
By Jeanne Sahadi
(CNN Money) Here’s a new way to think about the U.S. government’s epic borrowing: More than half of the $9 trillion in debt that Uncle Sam is expected to build up over the next decade will be interest.
More than half. In fact, $4.8 trillion.
If that’s hard to grasp, here’s another way to look at why that’s a problem.
In 2015 alone, the estimated interest due – $533 billion – is equal to a third of the federal income taxes expected to be paid that year, said Charles Konigsberg, chief budget counsel of the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group.
On the bright side – such as it is – the record levels of debt issued lately have paid for stimulus and other rescue programs that prevented the economy from falling off a cliff. And the money was borrowed at very low rates.
But accumulating any more interest on what the United States owes at this point is like extreme sport: dangerous.
