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Claim analyzed
Finance“Annual US interest payments on the national debt exceed the total US defense budget.”
The conclusion
Under standard federal budget definitions, this claim is accurate. In FY2025, net interest on the national debt (~$970 billion) exceeded national defense outlays (~$917-919 billion), according to U.S. Treasury data, the American Action Forum, and the Peterson Foundation. This milestone was first reached in FY2024. However, the claim's phrasing is imprecise: if "total defense budget" is interpreted to include broader defense-related spending (VA, homeland security, DOE nuclear programs), the comparison could narrow or reverse. The standard reading supports the claim.
Based on 24 sources: 18 supporting, 1 refuting, 5 neutral.
Caveats
- The claim does not specify whether 'interest payments' means gross interest (~$1.2T) or net interest (~$970B); both exceed standard defense outlays, but the gap varies significantly.
- The phrase 'total US defense budget' is ambiguous — the standard national defense budget (function 050) is ~$917-919B, but broader defense-related spending including VA, homeland security, and DOE nuclear programs could push the total higher.
- This comparison first became true in FY2024 and depends on prevailing interest rates; if rates decline substantially, the relationship could reverse.
Sources
Sources used in the analysis
Q4 2025: 1,227.495 Billions of Dollars, Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate. Updated: Feb 20, 2026.
Interest payments on the national debt will continue to exceed all defense spending and will surpass total discretionary spending by 2038. Interest spending on the national debt is projected to grow from 3.3 percent of GDP in 2026 to 6.9 percent by 2056.
The total amount of interest paid to trust funds over the past 12 months was $261.43 billion, an average of $21.79 billion per month. Net interest has almost tripled over the last five years and the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that net interest as a share of outlays will be 13.85 percent in FY2026.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that interest payments will total $1,039 billion in fiscal year 2026 and rise rapidly throughout the next decade — climbing to $2.1 trillion in 2036. In fact, Medicare (net of offsetting receipts) and Social Security are the only programs larger than net interest in 2026, and interest payments are projected to overtake Medicare (net of offsetting receipts) shortly after, in 2028. The federal government already spends more on interest than on budget areas such as: Defense.
Net interest on the national debt, the fastest growing part of the budget, is projected to more than double from $970 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 to $2.1 trillion by FY 2036 under the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) latest baseline. As a share of the economy, interest costs have grown from 1.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2021 to a record 3.2% in 2025, and are projected to grow further to 4.6% by 2036.
In fiscal year (FY) 2025, the federal government spent $970 billion on interest payments on the national debt – the equivalent of 19 percent of all federal revenue collections and roughly $7,300 per household. Over the decade, interest payments are projected to grow by an estimated 76 percent, from $1.0 trillion in FY 2026 to $1.8 trillion in FY 2035; interest is projected to grow faster than any major budgetary category.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that if current laws generally remain the same, net interest payments will total $16.2 trillion over the next decade, rising from an annual cost of $1.0 trillion in 2026 to $2.1 trillion in 2036. In 2025, the United States paid $970 billion in interest costs.
According to the U.S. Department of Treasury's September 2025 Monthly Treasury Statement, the federal government spent $970 billion on interest payments on the national debt in fiscal year (FY) 2025... The $970 billion the federal government spent on net interest payments in FY 2025 was more than it spent on national defense ($917 billion).
The fiscal year 2025 Department of Defense funding bill provides $833 billion, an increase of $150 million from the Biden Administration's request and $8.6 billion, one percent, above fiscal year 2024.
While the Treasury has grown used to servicing its debt 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.
For the fiscal year of 2025 ending in September, the government spent $1.22 trillion on interest alone, per Treasury data. The Treasury paid out $92 billion a month in net interest on the national debt in the final three months of 2025.
Interest payments on the national debt are the second largest spending item in Q1 of FY 2026, totaling $270 billion. Interest payments outpace even national defense spending ($267 billion) in Q1 of FY 2026. Interest payments first surpassed national defense spending back in FY 2024 and continued to grow in FY 2025.
The interest costs of financing the national debt are now the second largest category of spending in the federal budget. Net interest outlays have surpassed national defense and Medicare, and trail only Social Security. Interest spending has grown to more than 2.5 times its pre-pandemic level, from $375 billion in FY 2019 to $971 billion in FY 2025.
In fiscal year (FY) 2024, the federal government spent $881 billion on interest, which was more than defense spending for the same year. The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) January 2025 baseline projects that interest payments on the national debt will equal $13.8 trillion over the 2026 – 2035 budget window...
The U.S. Department of the Treasury pegs fiscal year 2025 interest payments at $1.22 trillion. These interest payments have exploded beyond what the country spends on other major categories, including defense and major health programs.
Just five years ago, in FY 2020, net interest totaled $345 billion; in FY 2025, it totaled $970 billion – nearly three times as large. While net interest... totaled $970 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) notes that spending for net interest payments on the public debt surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in FY 2025.
In FY 2025, the US spent about $919.2 billion on national defense. It accounted for 13% of the federal budget, making it the government's fifth-largest expenditure. Spending was 2% higher than in FY 2024, but 10% lower than the peak in 2010.
In fiscal year (FY) 2024, the federal government spent $881 billion on interest, which was more than defense spending for the same year. The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) January 2025 baseline projects that interest payments on the national debt will equal $13.8 trillion over the 2026 – 2035 budget window.
Particularly critical: US interest payments will even exceed US defense spending for the first time in 2024 - a dangerous and unsustainable development from a strategic perspective.
The Defense Appropriations bill for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 provides a base discretionary total of $838.7 billion, of which $838.5 billion is categorized as defense spending and $180 million as nondefense spending.
President Trump's declaration of a potential increase in U.S. defense spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027 has renewed long-standing debate over the appropriate scale of defense outlays and, more importantly, what such funding could realistically deliver. Critics will argue that a $1.5 trillion defense budget is excessive. However, U.S. defense spending as a share of GDP is lower today than at any point since World War II—even as the number and capability of potential adversaries have increased.
Of the $10.3 trillion the government spent in fiscal year 2025, according to federal spending data, $1.4 trillion went to national defense – just a little more than the $1.3 trillion taxpayers collectively spent on interest on the national debt. So far in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, interest payments have surpassed defense spending to become the third-largest category of federal spending, after only Social Security and Medicare.
The U.S. Department of Defense budget for fiscal year 2025 was approximately $820 billion in base defense spending, with total national defense outlays (including Veterans Affairs and other defense-related spending) reaching approximately $900-950 billion. This is substantially lower than the $1+ trillion in annual interest payments on the national debt.
The Trump administration is expected to front-load defense appropriations included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in fiscal year 2026, driving defense spending above $1 trillion (+15% year-on-year). This will bring total national defense spending north of $1 trillion to 3.3% of GDP.
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Expert review
How each expert evaluated the evidence and arguments
Expert 1 — The Logic Examiner
Multiple sources directly assert or quantify that FY2025 net interest (~$970B) exceeded national defense outlays (~$917–$919B) (Sources 8, 17) and that interest spending exceeds defense spending in recent years (Sources 4, 12), while the lone refuting comparator (Source 22) uses a much broader “national defense” figure ($1.4T) that appears to change the definition of “defense budget,” creating a scope/definition mismatch rather than a clean logical disproof. Given the claim's wording (“total US defense budget”) is ambiguous and the evidence supports the statement under the standard “national defense outlays/DoD-related” framing but not necessarily under an expanded $1.4T framing, the most logically defensible verdict is that the claim is directionally correct yet potentially misleading on definitions.
Expert 2 — The Context Analyst
The claim is sensitive to definitions the wording leaves out: “interest payments” can mean gross interest vs net interest, and “total US defense budget” can mean DoD base budget, total national defense outlays (050), or an even broader 'defense-related' tally; Source 8/17 compare net interest to national defense outlays (~$917–$919B) while Source 22 uses a broader $1.4T 'national defense' figure that can flip the comparison, and Source 1 is a Q4 SAAR rather than a fiscal-year total. With standard budget framing (net interest outlays vs national defense outlays) the statement is generally true in FY2024–FY2026 (Sources 8,12,4,2), but the unqualified phrase “total defense budget” makes it easy to misread as including broader defense-related spending where the result may not hold (Source 22), so the overall impression is misleadingly overbroad.
Expert 3 — The Source Auditor
The most reliable, independent quantitative source here is FRED/BEA (Source 1), which shows federal interest payments running at about $1.23T annual rate in Q4 2025, while credible secondary compilers (USAFacts, Source 17) and a Treasury-based analysis (AAF, Source 8) put FY2025 national defense around ~$917–$919B and net interest at ~$970B—supporting the claim under common budget definitions; however, the only source explicitly asserting a higher FY2025 “national defense” total than interest is a regional newspaper article (Source 22) with unclear category construction and lower authority, and several other “support” items are partisan/advocacy statements or projections rather than primary budget totals (Sources 2, 3, 12–15). Weighing source reliability and independence, the best-supported reading is that annual interest payments have exceeded defense outlays in recent fiscal years, but ambiguity around what counts as the “total US defense budget” (DoD base vs broader national defense vs broader security) makes the claim somewhat definition-dependent rather than unqualified.
Expert summary
The arguments
Two AI advocates debated this claim using the research gathered.
Argument for
The claim is unambiguously true: Source 8 (American Action Forum) directly confirms that the $970 billion spent on net interest in FY 2025 "was more than it spent on national defense ($917 billion)," and Source 15 (EPIC for America) corroborates that Treasury-reported FY 2025 interest payments reached $1.22 trillion — far exceeding the ~$919 billion defense figure confirmed by Source 17 (USAFacts). Further reinforcing this, Source 12 (EPIC for America) notes that "interest payments first surpassed national defense spending back in FY 2024 and continued to grow in FY 2025," and Source 4 (Peterson Foundation) explicitly states "the federal government already spends more on interest than on budget areas such as: Defense," making the claim supported by a broad, authoritative consensus spanning the Federal Reserve, CBO projections, Congressional committees, and independent fiscal watchdogs.
You're treating “national defense” outlays of ~$917–$919B (Sources 8, 17) as the “total US defense budget,” but that's a category choice—not the total—while the only source in this brief that explicitly frames FY2025 “total” defense spending puts national defense at $1.4T versus $1.3T interest, reversing your conclusion (Source 22). And your “consensus” claim is a classic apples-to-oranges move: EPIC/AAF/Peterson repeatedly cite “net interest” or generalized statements (Sources 4, 8, 12, 15) rather than matching the motion's “annual” and “total defense budget” definitions, which is exactly why your comparison isn't unambiguous.
Argument against
The motion is false because the only source that directly compares FY2025 totals reports national defense at $1.4T versus $1.3T in interest—meaning defense exceeds interest, not the other way around (Source 22, The Spokesman-Review). Meanwhile, the pro-motion figures are not apples-to-apples: FRED's $1.227T is a seasonally adjusted annual rate for “current expenditures: interest payments” in Q4 2025 rather than a full-year budget total (Source 1, FRED), and several other sources rely on projections or selective categories (e.g., “net interest” vs “defense” baselines) rather than the “total US defense budget” claimed (Sources 4-5, Peterson Foundation/CRFB).
Your reliance on Source 22 (The Spokesman-Review) as your sole direct comparator is a critical error — that source itself acknowledges interest payments have "surpassed defense spending" in the current fiscal year, and its $1.4T defense figure inflates the baseline by bundling categories beyond the standard DoD defense budget, whereas Source 8 (American Action Forum), drawing directly from the U.S. Treasury's official Monthly Treasury Statement, provides a clean apples-to-apples comparison confirming net interest ($970B) exceeded national defense ($917B) in FY 2025. Your "net vs. gross" objection also collapses under scrutiny: Source 15 (EPIC for America) cites Treasury-reported gross interest at $1.22 trillion for FY 2025, Source 17 (USAFacts) confirms defense at ~$919 billion, and Source 12 (EPIC for America) explicitly states interest first surpassed defense in FY 2024 and kept growing — meaning even on the most generous defense definition, the gap is well-established across Treasury data, CBO baselines, and Congressional committee statements.