America’s national debt borrowing binge means interest payments will rocket to $2 trillion a year by 2036, CBO says

The White House of 2036 will have a mammoth task on its hands: It will need to rustle up more than $2 trillion a year to pay the interest on its national debt burden, approximately 5% of the nation’s entire economy.

According to the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the U.S. government will continue to run a sizeable and growing deficit over the next decade. In 2026, the shortfall will stand at about $1.8 trillion, or 5.8% of GDP. Come 2036, that will have ballooned to $3.1 trillion, or roughly 7% of the American economy.

Projections of increased borrowing year after year—irrespective of whichever party is in the White House—means the U.S. will also increase the burden of interest payments needed to service its debt. At the moment, America’s national debt stands at $38.59 trillion, with Treasury data showing the government has paid out $427 billion in interest this fiscal year alone.

While the Treasury has grown used to servicing its debts to the tune of more than a trillion dollars annually for the past few years, that figure will double to $2.14 trillion by 2036, nearly double the yearly budget for spending on defense. According to an analysis released by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in December, $1 trillion per year in annual interest payments will be normal from here on out.

Breaking down the balance sheet over the next 10 years, the CBO estimated that the American economy will generate healthy revenues over the next decade. In 2026, it will rake in approximately $5.6 trillion, $5.9 trillion in 2027 and comfortably more than $8.3 trillion by 2036. Aiding the balance sheet’s bottom line into the future will be President Trump’s tariff regime will still knock $3 trillion off deficits, although the CBO highlighted these tariffs are inflationary, a claim the Trump White House disputes.

The tariffs in practice are also turning into, in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s phrase, a “shrinking ice cube,” as Trump’s continuing diminishment of their size as he strikes new trade deals had knocked $800 billion off his budgeted deficit reduction as of November, per the CBO. Since then, Trump slashed the tariff rates for India, announcing the outlines of a deal shortly after India and the European Union announced a comprehensive pact nearly 20 years in the making.

The biggest revenue drivers for the government over the next decade will be individual income taxes and payroll taxes, bringing in $4.2 trillion and $2.66 trillion come 2036, respectively.

While the income of the U.S. government will grow steadily, so too will its outgoings. By 2036, mandatory outlays such as Social Security and major healthcare programs such as Medicaid and Medicare will total more than $7 trillion, vying for the majority of the government’s funding before discretionary spending can be allocated.

Much of this is the result of America’s ageing population: According to the Population Reference Bureau, the number of Americans aged 65 or older will grow from 58 million in the early 2020s to 82 million come 2050, representing a 42% increase. As such, social security outgoings will go from $1.6 trillion in 2026 to $2.7 trillion in 2036, and healthcare programs will grow from $1.9 trillion to $3.1 trillion. This means the combined increases in spending on healthcare programs and net interest outlays alone come to near a quarter of the size of America’s economy in ten years’ time.

In other words, aging boomers have voted themselves increasingly lavish benefits, putting them on future generations’ proverbial credit card.

Increasing the burden on Americans

Despite theories that foreign investors could leverage their holdings of U.S. debt to punish America for its increasing aggression toward its allies, or warnings that investors may back out of the market over policy (à la Liz Truss), many economists think the outcome will be somewhat less dramatic.

“Financial repression” is one option: mandating that institutions must hold more debt, thus ensuring buyers prop up its value. Or inflation could be allowed to trickle higher: bad for consumers, but it would erode the real value of the debt. Quantitative easing could be another option, as increasing the money supply may prove inflationary but would have the desired effect of lowering the real value of borrowing.

The most likely outcome—unless the U.S. is able to rebalance its books by growing the economy out of an unbalanced debt-to-GDP ratio—means that U.S. consumers are going to end up paying, at some point, for the debts accumulated by the generations before them. As such, nonpartisan think tanks including the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation are calling for guardrails to be introduced to ensure present and future governments do not continue running deficits outsized to their revenues.

“CBO’s latest budget projection is an urgent warning to our leaders about America’s costly fiscal path,” the foundation’s CEO, Michael Peterson, told Fortune in a statement. “Improving affordability for American families is a top priority for the nation. Borrowing trillion after trillion takes us in the wrong direction, leading to higher interest costs and higher prices for everyday needs.”

As Maya MacGuineas, president of the CRFB said in a statement earlier this week: “Unless lawmakers want record-high debts and deficits to be our norm, both sides of the aisle must come together to address our unsustainable borrowing. The longer lawmakers wait, the higher the price for Americans.”

This election year, Peterson claimed, voters understand the connection between rising debt and their personal economic condition, plus the financial markets are watching. “Stabilizing our debt is an essential part of improving affordability, and must be a core component of the 2026 campaign conversation.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com