Why this must happen:
"Last week, amid the post-election frenzy, a critical milestone slipped by almost unnoticed: U.S. government debt surged past $36 trillion.
Let that number sink in for a moment. In just twelve months, the debt has exploded by $2.9 trillion. That's $8 billion of new debt every day, $331 million each hour, and $5.5 million every minute...
...The latest figures were published just days ago, and they showed (see "Table 3") that net interest payments hit $949 billion for this fiscal year through September. That's about $2.6 billion every single day.
Note: "Net interest" is the interest paid on U.S. Treasury debt held by the public, including both domestic and foreign sources.
Now, I'm focusing on net interest payments here because that's what Yellen talked about. The gross figure, mind you, sits at about $1.2 trillion.
But even this adjusted $949 billion figure already makes up 3.3% of America's GDP something we haven't seen in decades.
To put this in perspective: that's more than the annual spending on Medicare ($870 billion) and dwarfs Medicaid ($618 billion). It's also more than triple what the government spends on veterans' affairs ($325 billion). In fact, you could combine spending on the Department of Education ($268 billion), Veterans' Affairs, and the entire military budgetand interest payments would still be greater."