ALEC on NTD News: Interest Payments on Federal Debt Doubled in Last Decade
Our debt is climbing higher and higher, and it'll cause more and more in interest payments.
ALEC Chief Economist and Executive Vice President of Policy Jonathan Williams was a recent guest on NTD News commenting on the nation’s growing economic headwinds.
Host: Our national debt is by far the world’s largest reaching $31 trillion. It isn’t sustainable. The Chief Economist with the American Legislative Exchange Council Jonathan Williams says it isn’t even close to sustainable.
Jonathan Williams: One of the least discussed elements of this is just how much it is going to cost federal taxpayers across the board in terms of higher interest payments on this increasing federal debt. The Congressional Budget Office assumed that for 2022, we’re going to have roughly $400 billion in interest costs on the national debt. During the Obama administration we were paying about $200 billion a year in interest on the federal debt. That is doubled in the last decade.
Host: Williams says our debt is climbing higher and higher, and it will cause more and more in interest payments. Over time, however, there are some who say it doesn’t matter that the U.S. can keep printing more dollars because it’s the world’s reserve currency. Governments worldwide store up large amounts of the U.S. dollar and people worldwide like to trade in dollar currency. That makes it more manageable for the U.S. to borrow since there is always demand for dollars. But Williams doesn’t think this is an end-all- be-all solution.
Jonathan Williams: It has kept us away from a default position that other countries would have seen by now. Thinking critically about that, every day, I think the Communist Party in China, as well as Russia and other adversaries around the globe are looking for ways to dethrone the dollar for many reasons. And so this ought to be something that keeps policymakers up at night because there are major global powers out there that would love to see the dollar no longer the world’s reserve currency.