NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- If President Obama's 2011 budget were put into effect as proposed, the U.S. federal government would add an estimated $9.8 trillion to the country's accrued debt over the next decade, according to a preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
Of that amount, an estimated $5.6 trillion will be in interest alone.
We have gotten a huge break that interest rates fell off a cliff, but once they climb again the problem that any politician is going to have regardless of party is that even if BHO didn't add $1 to the debt, we are going to be looking at $400-500 Billion a year of interest accumulation on the $12 trillion of debt we already have.
Interest expense is going to be one of the biggest line items soon, and it is totally dead money as it doesn't do anything productive.
It is the thing that will make balancing the budget hardest ultimately, because it can't be a spending cut, and it will continue to grow. The only way to make it go away is to start running huge surpluses, which is virtually impossible.
It is the big elephant in the room no one wants to talk about, but everytime a liberal sulks about the lack of universal healthcare or a Conservative complains about the need for a major across the board tax cut, I hope they think about the hundreds of billions a year we spend on interest payments that could fund both of those things simultaneously were it not for the fuzzy math both sides use that created the debt mountain precluding us from being able to do so.