The US pays $36,000 in interest every second. That’s a new Lamborghini every 11 seconds
• Finance
For the second year in a row, the US government spent more than $1 trillion just on interest. In fiscal year 2026, which ended September 30, net interest on the public debt came to $1,143 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That works out to about $3.1 billion a day, or roughly $36,000 every second. In the time it takes to read this sentence, the bill has grown by enough to buy a brand-new car.
Key takeaways
- Net interest on the public debt reached $1,143 billion in fiscal 2026, up from $1,028 billion in fiscal 2025.
- That's about $3.1 billion a day, or about $36,000 a second: a new Lamborghini roughly every 11 seconds.
- Among the major spending categories CBO reports, only Social Security ($1,654 billion) was bigger.
- Interest costs rose 11%, faster than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or defense.
Interest also grew faster than any of the four programs. It rose by $115 billion, or 11%, while the others grew between 5% and 8%.
The Medicare figure is net of premiums and other offsetting receipts that CBO subtracts, so total Medicare spending before those receipts is higher. Overall, the government spent $7.4 trillion in fiscal 2026 and ran a deficit of $2.0 trillion, CBO estimates.
What $3.1 billion a day actually buys
A trillion dollars is hard to picture, so here is the interest bill broken down by the clock. Spread evenly across the year, $1,143 billion comes to about $130 million an hour, $2.2 million a minute and $36,000 every second, day and night, weekends included.
At that pace, the government's interest payments could buy:
- A brand-new car about every 1.4 seconds. The average new vehicle sold for $50,562 in September, according to Kelley Blue Book. That's roughly 2,600 new cars an hour.
- A new Lamborghini about every 11 seconds. The 2026 Lamborghini Temerario starts at $386,649, according to Kelley Blue Book, so the hourly interest bill would cover more than 330 of them.
- A typical American home about every 12 seconds. The median existing home sold for $429,100 in August, according to the National Association of Realtors. That's about five homes a minute, or roughly 300 an hour.
Interest also outpaces whole government programs day by day. On average, the government spent about $2.9 billion a day on Medicare and $2.5 billion a day on defense in fiscal 2026, both less than the $3.1 billion that went to interest.
Why interest costs keep rising
CBO gives two reasons for the increase. The debt was larger than in fiscal 2025, and long-term interest rates were higher. Lower short-term rates offset part of the rise.
The figure in this article is net interest on the public debt: the interest the government pays on Treasury securities held outside the government. It leaves out interest the government pays to its own trust funds, such as Social Security's, which is an internal transfer. That is why it is smaller than the "gross interest" figures sometimes quoted.
Methodology
All spending figures come from the Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Review: September 2026, published October 8, 2026. Fiscal 2026 figures are CBO's preliminary estimates for the year from October 2025 to September 2026, fiscal 2025 figures are actual. Medicare outlays are net of offsetting receipts, and defense covers the Department of Defense's military spending. The daily figures divide each annual total by 365, for example $1,143 billion divided by 365 ~ $3.1 billion. The hourly, per-minute and per-second figures divide the annual total by the number of hours, minutes and seconds in a 365-day year.
loading
Loading
