America’s Debt-Spiral Risk Grows

By Andrew Miiller • February 20, 2026

U.S spending is growing faster than revenue, federal deficits will soon exceed $3 trillion, and interest costs are set to explode, according to the February Budget and Economic Outlook, released on February 11 by the Congressional Budget Office. It updates the January 2025 baseline to account for the One Big Beautiful Bill, tariffs, changes in immigration and other factors. Here are the key numbers:

$5.6 trillion: The sum the federal government collects in taxes each year (17.5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product)
$7.5 trillion: What the government spends (23.3 percent of GDP)
$1.9 trillion: What the government borrows each year (5.8 percent of GDP)

According to the budget office, the government plans to increase taxes from $5.6 trillion to $8.3 trillion by 2036—but it also plans to increase spending from $7.5 trillion to $11.4 trillion. By that time, the national debt is projected to be $64 trillion.

But did you think about this? President Donald Trump has said he is aware of budget deficits exceeding 6 percent of GDP, but he is not worried because he will “grow” the nation out of debt problems by increasing the overall size of the U.S. economy.

The new congressional projections reveal such thinking as detached from reality.

Do the math: If the national debt grows from $38.7 trillion to $64 trillion in only 10 years, it will rise an average of 5.2 percent per year. The budget office projects that real GDP will grow by 2.2 percent this year, in part due to economic stimulus from the One Big Beautiful Bill, then decrease to 1.8 percent in the near future. Therefore, the national debt will grow at two to three times the rate of the economy.

This is a nation-destroying problem.

The budget office expects interest rates on a three-month treasury bill to be 3.1 percent in 2026, while interest rates on a 10-year treasury note are 4.4 percent. If this expectation is correct, the federal government will spend $2.1 trillion just in interest on its debt in 2036—nearly 26 percent of all tax revenue.

Things could get even worse if an unexpected bond crisis occurs at any point in the next decade. The 10-year treasury note yield peaked at around 15.8 percent in September 1981. If something similar happened again in the next few years, 100 percent of tax revenue would go to paying interest.

In the Bible, God instructed the ancient ancestors of the Americans that obedience to His laws produces blessings and disobedience produces curses. Deuteronomy 28 specifies debt problems as one of these curses. Specifically, God warned that if Israel turned away from Him, strangers would lend them money, but they would not lend to others. This produces debilitating debt.

Learn more: Read our Trends article “Why the Trumpet Watches America’s Economic Collapse.”