Billionaire David Rubenstein warned that the surging costs of servicing the national debt now exceeding defense spending are a sign 'the country is in trouble.'
David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of the Carlyle Group, warned that the cost of servicing the federal government's massive debt amid growing budget deficits is pushing the U.S. towards financial trouble.
Earlier this year, the federal government's net interest payments on the national debt — essentially the cost of servicing the previously accumulated debt — surpassed federal spending on the Department of Defense as well as Medicare spending. Through August, the federal government spent $870 billion on debt service in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2024, according to a preliminary estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office .
For comparison, spending on Medicare totaled $847 billion while the Department of Defense's spending totaled $753 billion in the fiscal year through August. That leaves debt interest as the second-largest expenditure category in the federal budget, trailing only Social Security, which spent a little more than $1.3 trillion in that period.
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