https://www.siliconvalley.com/2024/05/01/brooks-why-are-we-gambling-with-americas-future/

Over the past few decades, in a surge of bipartisan national self-confidence, the federal government has borrowed a lot of money, sometimes in response to national emergencies and sometimes to do the things people thought were worth doing. We gave ourselves permission to incur all this debt because interest rates were low and many people assumed that things would stay that way, so the costs of carrying that much debt wouldn’t be too onerous.

Unfortunately, that assumption turned out to be incorrect. Interest rates have risen. According to The Wall Street Journal, America is expected to spend $870 billion, or 3.1% of gross domestic product, this year on interest payments on the federal debt. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the government will spend more on interest payments than on the entire defense budget. Within three years, if interest rates remain high, payments on the debt could become the federal government’s second-largest expenditure, behind Social Security.