Honest projection · estimated
Interest on US Debt Today (est.)
A projection of how much the US federal government has paid in interest on its debt since midnight UTC, ticking at its most recent complete-year total — $970.4 billion of net interest in fiscal year 2025, up about 10 percent in a single year — spread evenly across the year. This is money that buys no services, only the cost of past borrowing, and it has climbed into the same roughly trillion-dollar league as Medicare and the major health programs. It is the fastest-growing large item in the budget. The economies this sits inside are one tap away in Atlas.
About this number
This is an honest projection, not a census. It is computed by carrying a published figure forward at a known rate over real elapsed time — ≈ $31,000/sec (≈$2.7bn/day), from US Treasury — net interest on the federal debt $970.4 billion in fiscal year 2025, spread evenly across the year. The source is US Treasury (Fiscal Service) FY2025. The true value is known only to within a margin; this is the running estimate, and we label it as one.