Nearly half of individual income tax revenues in fiscal year 2024 were dedicated to paying interest on the national debt, new Treasury Department data show.
According to the Monthly Treasury Statement, the federal government registered the third-highest budget deficit in the nation’s history, exceeding $1.83 trillion for fiscal year 2024, an increase of 8 percent from fiscal year 2023.
The U.S. government borrowed, on average, $5 billion per day.
Social Security was the top spending item, soaring to $1.461 trillion. This was followed by health care ($912 billion), Medicare ($874 billion), national defense ($874 billion), and income security ($671 billion).
Gross interest—payments on debt held by the public as well as intragovernmental payments—was Washington’s second-largest budgetary item, topping $1.133 trillion. This came in just below the Treasury’s full-year fiscal estimate of about $1.157 trillion….