The US spent $882 billion just on the interest on its debt last year. kinda mad.
I’m sure the comment section will be full of full and frank open-hearted and warm debate !
Source: US Treasury
Tool: Sankey Matic
this is disgusting
eat the rich
This shows you why people focusing on the discretionary spending are missing the point with the US budget. Unless the government is actually willing to make changes to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Defense, there’s no way to get out of this ~2T deficit problem, and because the legislature has shown no real interest in doing so, that line item for debt interest is only going to get worse.
That 1.8 is literally just old people huh.
~~Medicaid~~ Medicare and Social Security
It really needs to be pointed out that the US actively *wants* to have debts. It’s a way to entangle economies; to make it so that other countries have a vested financial interest in their continued stability; and it’s part of a wider project to make the US dollar the de facto currency of the world. Nations are not households.
How is all US corporate tax less than the interest on government debt. What a tax haven lol.
This really proves that corporations don’t pay their fair share.
Can someone explain to me how the second biggest expenditure can be healthcare, but there is still health insurance and no universal free healthcare? Seems wildly inefficient.
Corporate taxes are at rookie numbers
Good thing we are slashing those little things at the bottom. That will make a big difference. /s
I feel like the left side should be bigger. Those Corporation Taxes look awful small.
Don’t worry a certain political party in the US thinks removing income tax will solve it!
Don’t worry, guys, Elon says he saved us $150 billion by the end of 2026.
So in very rough numbers, if we doubled all taxes and held spending constant we could pay off the national debt in 10 years. This would eliminate the $882B/yr interest payment, and taxes could be then dropped back to near (but still marginally higher) than 2024 rates with an overall balanced budget.
Wow if only there wasn’t an income ceiling for social security taxes
Our interest was almost half of the deficit.
Once again lumping insurance programs in with revenue/spending is disingenuous.
Why is social security on the payables side but not on the revenue side?
Is there a place where I can find these infographics for each fiscal year going back, say 10 years or so?
Fucking nuts that we spend more on Interest than national defense. What the fuck man. And they’re all up in arms about student loans. Gtfo
Is SS contributions a part of the Payroll Taxes, or is that just repayment of the bonds that the SS admin buys to hedge against inflation?
Why so little from corporations?
The main problem seems to be the money spent healthcare and medicare. If that much is spent, US shouldn’t have the kind of medical insurance problems they are having right now. There is definitely something stealing the money in the middle.
Imagine how this chart would look like, if Elmo and his Broligarchs would be equally taxed on their assets as every other normal citizen with a five figure income. Same for corporations like Amazon and Co.
Is social security tax included in income tax?
Social Security is self-funded why is it considered an expenditure? That’s just misleading.
It amazes me how much people are focusing on the left side of the visual but not the right side.
Since the early 1900’s, the U.S. government has never been able to consistently collect more than ~17.5% of the country’s GDP as a federal tax receipt. In 2024 the federal government collected ~16.8%. There is pretty sound monetary theory that this level is effectively the ceiling of what the government can collect without it being counterproductive over the long term.
Meanwhile, federal spending as a % of GDP has steadily increased over that same time span, except for the 1990’s where it declined. The 1990’s were also the last time the U.S. successfully balanced its budget.
There are many things on the right side of the visual that can be addressed on the margins.
I bet there’s around 900 billionaires that could substantially increase that tax revenue and an inflated defense budget that could bring this to even.
I know this style of comments get reported on Reddit but still:
Where I’m from, the government spends about 10% of its total budget on healthcare and manages to cover everyone. Life expectancy here is around 83 years, and no one goes bankrupt over medical bills.
Most people pay around $25–$50 a month for supplemental insurance that covers extras like dental or more specialist access. If you really want to cut wait times for non-emergencies, you can pay for private insurance on top of that — but it’s optional, not a necessity.
In contrast, the U.S. spends about 25% of its federal budget on healthcare — just the public part — yet still leaves tens of millions uninsured or underinsured. Life expectancy there is around 76 years, and average out-of-pocket costs are over $1,300 per person annually.
Medical employees still make relatively high salaries, it’s just that we have much less middleman.
It’s not about how much is spent — it’s about how efficiently it’s used.
It seems like they could just tax corporations and fill the gap??
It can be easy to look at a chart like this and go directly to zero-sum problem solving. We don’t need to balance the budget in year one. That would probably disrupt the global economy.
For me, some simple first steps would be mandating a small percentage reduction to the defense budget. You can put a fixed-term annual escalator on it if you want. Another would be taxing the 1% individuals more appropriately than we do today. You could also audit our debt service to see if there are better ways to approach it.
And many economists would tell you carrying a deficit is a *good* thing for federal governments to do. It arguably encourages spending, promotes stable interest rates, strengthens our currency and makes us more resilient against crises like natural disasters, war and global pandemics.
Did they ever think of simply increasing taxes?
This feels wrong. As Social Security doesn’t come from the general pool, but from its own, And there are laws stating it must not exceed what it takes in and interest on said account. Yet that account doesn’t seem to be accounted for in this chart.
Sure, let’s cut back on taxes some more.
Especially on the rich.
It’s wild that corporations pay less tax than individuals do…
It’s unbelievable how corporations contribute that little. We have most of the wealthiest corporations in the world, they need to contribute more.
God corporation taxes is pitifully low
The amount of interest we’re paying on the national debt blows my mind.
![The US Government’s Budget Last Year, In One Chart (FY2024) [OC]](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/nqols3q5jb2f1-1920x1024.png)
39 comments
The US spent $882 billion just on the interest on its debt last year. kinda mad.
I’m sure the comment section will be full of full and frank open-hearted and warm debate !
Source: US Treasury
Tool: Sankey Matic
this is disgusting
eat the rich
This shows you why people focusing on the discretionary spending are missing the point with the US budget. Unless the government is actually willing to make changes to Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and Defense, there’s no way to get out of this ~2T deficit problem, and because the legislature has shown no real interest in doing so, that line item for debt interest is only going to get worse.
That 1.8 is literally just old people huh.
~~Medicaid~~ Medicare and Social Security
It really needs to be pointed out that the US actively *wants* to have debts. It’s a way to entangle economies; to make it so that other countries have a vested financial interest in their continued stability; and it’s part of a wider project to make the US dollar the de facto currency of the world. Nations are not households.
How is all US corporate tax less than the interest on government debt. What a tax haven lol.
This really proves that corporations don’t pay their fair share.
Can someone explain to me how the second biggest expenditure can be healthcare, but there is still health insurance and no universal free healthcare? Seems wildly inefficient.
Corporate taxes are at rookie numbers
Good thing we are slashing those little things at the bottom. That will make a big difference. /s
I feel like the left side should be bigger. Those Corporation Taxes look awful small.
Don’t worry a certain political party in the US thinks removing income tax will solve it!
Don’t worry, guys, Elon says he saved us $150 billion by the end of 2026.
So in very rough numbers, if we doubled all taxes and held spending constant we could pay off the national debt in 10 years. This would eliminate the $882B/yr interest payment, and taxes could be then dropped back to near (but still marginally higher) than 2024 rates with an overall balanced budget.
Wow if only there wasn’t an income ceiling for social security taxes
Our interest was almost half of the deficit.
Once again lumping insurance programs in with revenue/spending is disingenuous.
Why is social security on the payables side but not on the revenue side?
Is there a place where I can find these infographics for each fiscal year going back, say 10 years or so?
Fucking nuts that we spend more on Interest than national defense. What the fuck man. And they’re all up in arms about student loans. Gtfo
Is SS contributions a part of the Payroll Taxes, or is that just repayment of the bonds that the SS admin buys to hedge against inflation?
Why so little from corporations?
The main problem seems to be the money spent healthcare and medicare. If that much is spent, US shouldn’t have the kind of medical insurance problems they are having right now. There is definitely something stealing the money in the middle.
Imagine how this chart would look like, if Elmo and his Broligarchs would be equally taxed on their assets as every other normal citizen with a five figure income. Same for corporations like Amazon and Co.
Is social security tax included in income tax?
Social Security is self-funded why is it considered an expenditure? That’s just misleading.
It amazes me how much people are focusing on the left side of the visual but not the right side.
Since the early 1900’s, the U.S. government has never been able to consistently collect more than ~17.5% of the country’s GDP as a federal tax receipt. In 2024 the federal government collected ~16.8%. There is pretty sound monetary theory that this level is effectively the ceiling of what the government can collect without it being counterproductive over the long term.
Meanwhile, federal spending as a % of GDP has steadily increased over that same time span, except for the 1990’s where it declined. The 1990’s were also the last time the U.S. successfully balanced its budget.
There are many things on the right side of the visual that can be addressed on the margins.
Not sure if folks know about this site but I use it constantly to comb through gov data.
https://usafacts.org/government-spending/
I bet there’s around 900 billionaires that could substantially increase that tax revenue and an inflated defense budget that could bring this to even.
I know this style of comments get reported on Reddit but still:
Where I’m from, the government spends about 10% of its total budget on healthcare and manages to cover everyone. Life expectancy here is around 83 years, and no one goes bankrupt over medical bills.
Most people pay around $25–$50 a month for supplemental insurance that covers extras like dental or more specialist access. If you really want to cut wait times for non-emergencies, you can pay for private insurance on top of that — but it’s optional, not a necessity.
In contrast, the U.S. spends about 25% of its federal budget on healthcare — just the public part — yet still leaves tens of millions uninsured or underinsured. Life expectancy there is around 76 years, and average out-of-pocket costs are over $1,300 per person annually.
Medical employees still make relatively high salaries, it’s just that we have much less middleman.
It’s not about how much is spent — it’s about how efficiently it’s used.
It seems like they could just tax corporations and fill the gap??
It can be easy to look at a chart like this and go directly to zero-sum problem solving. We don’t need to balance the budget in year one. That would probably disrupt the global economy.
For me, some simple first steps would be mandating a small percentage reduction to the defense budget. You can put a fixed-term annual escalator on it if you want. Another would be taxing the 1% individuals more appropriately than we do today. You could also audit our debt service to see if there are better ways to approach it.
And many economists would tell you carrying a deficit is a *good* thing for federal governments to do. It arguably encourages spending, promotes stable interest rates, strengthens our currency and makes us more resilient against crises like natural disasters, war and global pandemics.
Did they ever think of simply increasing taxes?
This feels wrong. As Social Security doesn’t come from the general pool, but from its own, And there are laws stating it must not exceed what it takes in and interest on said account. Yet that account doesn’t seem to be accounted for in this chart.
Sure, let’s cut back on taxes some more.
Especially on the rich.
It’s wild that corporations pay less tax than individuals do…
It’s unbelievable how corporations contribute that little. We have most of the wealthiest corporations in the world, they need to contribute more.
God corporation taxes is pitifully low
The amount of interest we’re paying on the national debt blows my mind.
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