{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-interesting-times/", "Interesting Times", "2017-03-21", "2017", "2017-03", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul released the latest edition of \u201cThe Waste Report,\u201d an ongoing project cataloguing egregious examples of waste within the U.S. government.\n\nNo one can borrow unlimited amounts of money forever, but that hasn\u2019t stopped our federal government from trying. This week\u2019s Report examines the results, which include nearly $2,000 of your taxes going solely toward interest payments on the national debt rather than defense, education, or infrastructure. Our government could fund the budgets of a staggering list of departments and agencies \u2013 combined \u2013 with what it instead devotes to interest.\n\nYou can learn more in this week\u2019s \u201cWaste Report\u201d HERE or below.\n\n****\n\nLast week, the federal government hit what is known as the \u201cdebt ceiling.\u201d Not sure what the debt ceiling is? Well, just like a credit card limits people on the amount they can charge, the law limits how much the federal government can borrow (the so-called \u201cdebt limit\u201d).\n\nBe it the credit card in your wallet or federal borrowing, the reasoning for the limit is the same: no person or even government can borrow unlimited amounts of money forever. Without a limit, the minimum payments will just keep growing until they are unmanageable.\n\nWhen we hit the limit, Uncle Sam will try to delay but will eventually call on Congress for a credit limit increase (like anyone with a spending problem).\n\nThe Federal Credit Card\n\nSo what exactly does Uncle Sam\u2019s credit card statement look like? Well, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in January that our federal gross debt will be $20.36 trillion[1] by the end of this year, with net interest of $295 billion.[2] Both of these numbers are up from our report last year, Interested in Waste, by approximately $1 trillion and $40 billion respectively \u2013 the direct result of failing to balance the federal budget.\n\nThese are all big numbers. So to put it in perspective, let\u2019s imagine Uncle Sam is an average American and makes an annual wage of $48,320.[3] Sam would already have $288,954 in debt. His minimum payment on that debt would be nearly $4,000 this year, but that is just because he did a balance transfer a while ago and is still on a low teaser rate of about 2%. Someday soon, that rate is going to expire, and his payment will at least double. Even still, right now Sam seems to be able to manage his debt, except that Sam plans to spend $56,255 this year \u2013 increasing his debt load by almost $8,000 to nearly $297,000. Worse still, Sam isn\u2019t bashful about his plan to keep spending more than he makes each year for the rest of his life.\n\nIt doesn\u2019t take a financial whiz to see that Sam cannot keep this up too much longer.\n\nWhy Should You Care?\n\nAs we know, Uncle Sam is not a real person with a job. Instead, he is an enormous government that gets almost all his money from your taxes. Even if he is only paying interest (the minimum payment), he has to pay that in cash. That means the first $1,966 YOU PAY in taxes will go just to interest payments.[4] Not defense, not education, not roads \u2013 interest. Worse, it is all wasted. The government and you, the taxpayer, do not actually get anything for this \u2013 not one hour of work and not even one sticky note.\n\nInterest Roll Call\n\nIf you are like most people, at some point you have sat down to pay your credit card bill(s) and thought, \u201cInterest is killing me. I could pay for a lot of other stuff (or pay this card down faster) if it weren\u2019t for this interest.\u201d We\u2019ve thought the same thing about the federal interest payment. So, what could we pay for? The $295 billion in interest payments we will pay this year COULD have covered the budgets of the Departments of: Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, and State, as well as the EPA, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Small Business Administration, the U.S. Congress, the Federal Courts, all international assistance programs, the Executive Office of the President, and the Army Corps of Engineers \u2013 COMBINED.[5]\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T21:30:05Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-interesting-times/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9242077358067036, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}