The cost of servicing the vast US federal debt now outstrips the defense budget, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has claimed in an interview with the All-In podcast. He added that the country is “going bankrupt extremely quickly.”
The US Treasury announced in late July that the national debt had surpassed $35 trillion, having soared by a trillion in a six-month period.
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In June, the US House Of Representatives passed its version of the annual defense policy bill that authorizes a record $895 billion in spending, marking an increase of 1% compared to the previous fiscal year.
“Interest payments on the national debt are now higher than the entire Defense Department budget and rising,” Musk said, warning that the US is “going bankrupt extremely quickly.”
The tycoon stressed that every trillion dollars of debt added is money that “our kids and grandkids are going to have to pay somehow.”
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Earlier this week, the tech billionaire shared a post on his X platform (formerly Twitter) by an account focused on finance and economics, stating that the US would have to pay over $1.2 trillion in interest on the debt in the coming 12 months, which is reportedly equal to about 25% of government revenue
Earlier this month, Musk warned that the current rate of government spending was putting the US in the fast lane to bankruptcy, and that government overspending was stoking inflation.
In August, the US Labor Department reported that annual inflation had dipped below 3% in the previous month for the first time since 2021. Prices of goods and services went up by 2.9%, while core inflation, which excludes the food and energy industries, rose by 3.2% over the previous 12 months.