23 cents of every tax dollar goes to pay interest on U.S. debt

The United States is sitting atop a fiscal precipice. With the total U.S. debt surpassing $37.43 trillion as of September 2025, the nation faces a historic reality. Nearly one-quarter of every tax dollar it collects is consumed by servicing the interest payments on its debt burden.

The relentless march of U.S. debt

According to monthly updates from both the U.S. Treasury and Joint Economic Committee, the national debt has soared to $37.43 trillion. This marks an increase of $2.09 trillion in just the past year.

The interest payments alone for FY2025 exceed $478 billion year-to-date, up 17% from last year, according to CNBC.

This expense is projected to account for about 23 cents of every dollar collected by the IRS in revenue. This is a staggering proportion that has risen sharply as global interest rates normalize following years of quantitative easing.

Tariffs: big numbers, small impact

Recent years have seen the U.S. government rack up record-breaking tariff revenues, especially after a suite of new import duties imposed under the Trump administration.

These tariffs are expected to bolster Treasury coffers and could reduce the national deficit by $4 trillion over a decade.

Yet even such windfalls barely dent the mountain of national U.S. debt, with rising interest costs outpacing tariff collection gains. The IMF cautions that “the scale of the increase in tariff revenue is highly uncertain,” while Eliant Capital posted:

“Despite tariff revenues, the deficit for July was $291B with the U.S. spending $630B and collecting $338B meaning 46¢ was borrowed for every $1 spent.”

US debt and tariffs

Nothing stops this train

Macro analyst Lyn Alden has popularized the “nothing stops this train” thesis, a phrase borrowed from pop culture but now synonymous with the U.S. debt dilemma.

Alden’s analysis argues that persistent deficits and relentless spending make for an era of fiscal dominance and that substantive fiscal reform is politically impossible. In her view, the relentless accrual of debt is structurally built into the system, and nothing but a paradigm shift (such as hard money) can break the cycle. Alden told Slate Sundays:

“Just structurally, it’s [U.S. debt] growing above target almost without any way to stop it.”

According to the Peterson Foundation, interest payments are now the third-largest spending category for the federal government. They surpass nearly every other program except Social Security and Medicare.

As a share of revenues, federal interest payments will rise to 18.4 percent by year’s end, a level not seen since the early 1990s.

As interest payments consume ever-larger shares of federal revenue and traditional remedies like tariffs and spending cuts prove insufficient, the conversation around “hard money” intensifies.

Bitcoin and other cryptos are increasingly viewed as store-of-value alternatives in an era of persistent monetary expansion.

As Alden’s thesis warns, nothing stops this train, and this realization is fueling renewed attention to hard money solutions like Bitcoin and gold.

Investors seek alternatives like Bitcoin and gold

Both gold and Bitcoin have seen strong demand as alternative stores of value amid fiscal concerns and inflationary pressure.

As of mid-September 2025, gold had reached an all-time high, trading at over $3,600 per ounce, up more than 41% year-over-year.

Some analysts expect gold’s rally to continue, projecting prices toward $3,800 by the end of the year as global liquidity concerns drive investors into safe havens.

Bitcoin, dubbed by many as “digital gold,” is trading around $115,000–$118,000 after rebounding from its September lows near $108,000.

While Bitcoin’s price action has been volatile, many analysts, including Lyn Alden, expect to see it to hit at least $150,000 by the end of this cycle.

As fiscal pressures mount, these alternatives are increasingly seen as key safeguards in diversified portfolios, in a time when U.S. debt is spinning out of control.

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