Chart of the Day

From Veronique de Rugy in the American:


source: American

As de Rugy explains:

[T]rillions of dollars in projected federal budget deficits over the next decade threaten long-term economic stability and complicate the president’s spending plans.

The chart . . . illustrates this point. Based on Congressional Budget Office data, it represents the interest the government paid on the federal debt as a percentage of GDP between 1962 and today and the projected debt service payments up until 2082. The projections are illustrated under the current CBO baseline and under the CBO alternative, more realistic, scenario. For comparison, the graph also shows CBO’s projections for the cost of Medicare and Social Security as a percentage of GDP. Notice that under either of CBO’s scenarios, the net interest payments, or the costs of the debt, rival the cost of two of our nation’s most expensive social programs.

As even Edmund Andrews of the New York Times confirmed, the projected annual interest expense within a decade "would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Agreed--twice.

BTW, I consider this chart wrong, for the reasons explained in comments here.

(via The Corner)