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The interest bill

Interest on the federal debt is now one of the largest line items in the United States budget. It buys nothing, employs nobody, and is contractually senior to everything else.

Updated October 18, 2026

$1.4T

Interest paid, FY2026

Gross, all holders

214%

Growth over ten years

Against FY2016

$40.4T

Total debt outstanding

As of 2026-10-15

$3.7B

Per day

Every day, including weekends

What interest outranks

Federal agency outlays for the current fiscal year, set against the interest bill. Interest costs more than Defense, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and everything below them combined, a total of $2.6T.

Interest highlighted. Agency figures are outlays for the active fiscal year from USAspending. The Treasury department is excluded because its outlay contains this interest payment.

How it got here

Through the 2010s the debt grew while rates fell, and the two roughly cancelled out. Both moved the same way after 2021, and the cost of carrying the borrowing doubled inside four years.

USD billions

$266B$558B$851B$1144B$1437B2010201320162019202220252026Interest
Gross interest expense by federal fiscal year, from Treasury's own accounting. The series begins in FY2010, which is as far back as this dataset is published.

How this was built

Treasury reports interest in two categories, public issues and Government Account Series, split across several accounting groups. Government Account Series appears twice, once on a cash basis and once on an accrual basis, so the accrual rows are dropped to avoid double counting. Summing the September fiscal-year-to-date rows reproduces Treasury's published annual figure, which is how FY2024 lands on $1.13 trillion. Agency outlays come from USAspending for the current active fiscal year. Treasury's own outlay is excluded from the comparison because it contains the interest payment itself.

Sources