The problem with an increasing debt burden is that it costs more to maintain it: This is precisely the issue with which the U.S. Treasury is wrangling at present. As total U.S. national debt ticks over $39 trillion, the interest payments on that value are eye-watering: $529 billion for the first six months of the current fiscal year. A new budget update from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released yesterday highlights that the government—according to preliminary estimates—paid out the near-$530 billion between October 2025, when the fiscal year starts, and March 2026. This equates to more than $88 billion in interest payments a month, or more than $22 billion a month. That means the service payments on public debt are roughly equal to spending for the same period on both the Department of Defense’s military budget and the Department of Education. These two outlays contribute costs of $461 billion and $70 billion respectively.
The net interest payments on public debt are also increasing at a pace. For the same period last year, the Treasury paid $497 billion to service its debt. The difference from last year to this is a $33 billion leap—or 7% more than before.
The CBO report notes service payments increased “because the debt was larger than it was in the first half of fiscal year 2025 and because of higher long-term interest rates. Declines in short-term interest rates partially mitigated the overall rise in interest payments.”
The wider debt picture
Efforts are being made to rebalance the books, with the likes of President Trump’s tariffs playing a role.
The CBO’s latest monthly update showed that receipts for the first half of the year totaled $2.5 trillion, an increase of $223 billion on the same six-month period last year. Outlays have also increased, but at a slower pace: up $84 billion from $3.57 trillion in 2025 to $3.65 trillion in 2026.
Despite the increase in revenues for the government, a significant deficit still emerged: $1.2 trillion for the first six months of the current fiscal year. Although this was an $140 billion improvement on the deficit for last year, it still represents borrowing of more than $2 trillion for the full fiscal year.
Of that deficit, the latest report shows that in March alone the government borrowed $163 billion—$3 billion more than the deficit recorded for the previous March.
The update did little to impress the likes of Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. In a statement she said: “Both Congress and the president continue to ignore the urgent need to get our borrowing under control. As lawmakers consider the budget process for the upcoming fiscal year, we hope that they come up with plans to reduce deficits from the too-high 6% of GDP to a more sustainable 3% of GDP; secure our nation’s ailing trust funds for Social Security, Medicare, and highways; and ultimately fix the broken process that got us into this mess.”
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