The Federalist Papers

Americans Sent $282 Billion to Foreign Bondholders Last Year as National Debt Crosses $30 Trillion

steve.straub@imgcs.com — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:56:34 +0000

A quiet report from the Congressional Research Service landed this week, and buried inside it are two numbers every American should know. The publicly held portion of the national debt has crossed $30.1 trillion. And in 2025 alone, the U.S. Treasury sent $282.4 billion in interest payments to foreign bondholders. That number is up 22 percent in a single year. Total federal interest payments hit $970 billion in fiscal year 2025. Washington now spends more servicing old debt than it spends on the entire national defense budget. The Founders warned us about this. We did it anyway.

Key Facts

- Publicly held federal debt crossed $30.1 trillion in December 2025, according to the Congressional Research Service.

- Total gross federal debt now stands at roughly $38 to $39 trillion, including money the government owes itself.

- The federal government paid $282.4 billion in interest to foreign holders of U.S. debt in 2025.

- That is a 22 percent jump from the $230.6 billion paid to foreigners in 2024.

- Total federal interest payments in fiscal year 2025 hit $970 billion — nearly triple the $345 billion paid just five years earlier.

- Interest on the debt is now the third-largest line item in the federal budget, behind only Social Security and Medicare. It exceeds all spending on national defense.

- 19 cents of every federal tax dollar now goes to pay interest on past borrowing.

- The per-household share of federal interest payments is roughly $7,300 per year.

- The top three foreign holders of U.S. debt are Japan ($1.2 trillion), the United Kingdom ($866 billion), and China ($683.5 billion).

- China has cut its U.S. Treasury holdings by nearly a third since 2021, rotating into gold and other assets.

- The Congressional Budget Office projects interest payments will reach $1.8 trillion per year by 2035.

Rest of the Story

Why the Foreign Interest Bill Exploded

The 22 percent one-year jump in interest sent overseas is not an accident. It is the inevitable result of two forces working together. First, the debt itself keeps growing. The federal government borrowed another $2.2 trillion in fiscal year 2025, according to the Government Accountability Office. More debt means more bonds outstanding, and more bonds means more interest payments due. Second, interest rates on new debt are much higher than they were during the cheap-money years of 2008 through 2021. Every time an old low-rate Treasury bond matures, Washington rolls it over into a new bond at current rates. That process resets more of the national debt at higher yields every single month. The pain compounds.

What the Government Itself Is Saying

This is not a partisan warning from an outside think tank. In its January 2026 audit of the federal debt schedules, the Government Accountability Office stated plainly that “the federal government remains on an unsustainable long-term fiscal path.” That language appeared in a formal audit opinion, signed by federal auditors. The Congressional Budget Office has been even more direct. Net interest payments are now the fastest-growing category in the entire federal budget. They are projected to consume nearly 16 percent of all federal spending by 2029. That would be the highest level ever recorded.

China Is Quietly Walking Away

While Japan and the United Kingdom have increased their U.S. debt holdings, China is heading the other direction. Beijing held $1.04 trillion in U.S. Treasuries at the end of 2021. By December 2025, that figure had fallen to $683.5 billion — a drop of roughly one-third in four years. China is not the only country reconsidering. In late 2025, global central bank reserves held in gold surpassed reserves held in U.S. Treasuries for the first time since 1996. Foreign governments are voting with their portfolios, and they are voting to diversify away from the dollar.

The Trap Closes on American Taxpayers

The result is a trap that gets tighter every year. The more Washington borrows, the more interest it owes. The more interest it owes, the less it has for anything else. That means higher taxes, cuts to other programs, or even more borrowing — which makes the problem worse. Fox News has reported extensively on how rising interest costs are crowding out funding for defense, veterans, and infrastructure. Foreign bondholders do not pay American taxes. They do not employ American workers. They do not spend their interest payments at American businesses. Every dollar that leaves the country as debt service is a dollar that no longer circulates in the American economy.

Commentary

The Founding generation saw this coming with perfect clarity. In 1816, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Taylor that he placed “economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.” Jefferson did not mean this as political rhetoric. He meant it as a warning about the survival of the republic itself. Seven years earlier, Jefferson had written to James Madison with a principle he considered self-evident: “The earth belongs in usufruct to the living.” One generation has no moral right to chain the next generation to debts it did not create and did not approve. Today, every American baby is delivered with roughly $113,000 of federal debt already strapped to its back. No newborn voted for that burden. No newborn ever will. George Washington agreed. In his Farewell Address of 1796, Washington told the American people to avoid “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.” The first president said this directly to the American people, as his parting counsel. The modern federal government has done the opposite — not by accident, but as policy, for more than fifty years straight. And this is where the $282 billion figure stops being an abstraction. That money was generated by American workers. It was taxed by the federal government. And then it was mailed overseas — to Tokyo, to London, to Brussels, to Beijing — because Washington politicians of both parties spent money that did not exist and borrowed the rest from foreigners. That works out to roughly $2,100 taken from every American household last year and shipped abroad. Nobody voted for that transfer of wealth. It happened because career politicians refused to tell the American people the truth about what federal spending actually costs.

Final Summary

The debt is not Washington’s problem. It is the problem of every American worker, every American parent, and every American child yet to be born. Jefferson warned that public debt was the greatest danger a free republic could face. Washington warned against throwing the burden onto future generations. Both warnings were ignored, by both parties, for decades. The bill has now come due — $282 billion of it, in a single year, to foreign bondholders. The only peaceful solution is the one the Framers prescribed: return the federal government to its constitutional limits, stop spending money we do not have, and honor the sacred compact with posterity.

Senator Calls For Trump Impeachment: “Unfit For Office”

steve.straub@imgcs.com — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:37:23 +0000

• Andy Kim calls Trump “unfit for office” — cannot name a single high crime or misdemeanor.

• Kim has been a U.S. senator for roughly 15 months — already demanding the removal of a president who won 312 electoral votes.

• Democrats tried impeachment in 2019, impeachment in 2021, and indictment in 2023 — Kim is now auditioning for attempt number four.

• The Twenty-Fifth Amendment requires the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to act — Kim knows this will never happen.

• Trump won the national popular vote and the Electoral College. Kim won New Jersey by fewer than 100,000 votes.

Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) wants to remove the President of the United States. He just can’t tell you why — not in any constitutional sense that matters.

On Wednesday, Kim publicly called for Trump’s removal via the Twenty-Fifth Amendment or impeachment, declaring the president “unfit for office.” That’s it. No specific act. No identified crime. No high misdemeanor. Just a freshman senator’s opinion dressed up in constitutional language.

“Unfit for office” is not a constitutional standard. It’s a talking point. The Constitution requires high crimes and misdemeanors for impeachment — specific, identifiable conduct serious enough to override the will of the voters. Kim offered none of that, because there is none to offer.

Trump is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief. I support his removal from office, whether it be through the 25th Amendment or impeachment in Congress. pic.twitter.com/mzRCdGuU1b

— Senator Andy Kim (@SenatorAndyKim) April 9, 2026

And the Twenty-Fifth Amendment route? That requires the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to certify the president is unable to discharge his duties. JD Vance isn’t doing that. Neither is anyone in Trump’s Cabinet. Kim knows this. He called for it anyway.

So what’s actually happening here?

Alexander Hamilton answered that question in 1788. In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton warned that impeachment proceedings “will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused.” He feared impeachment would be captured by faction — used not to remove a genuine criminal from office, but to relitigate elections that one side refuses to accept.

That’s Andy Kim’s play. Not accountability. Theater.

Democrats have now tried to remove Donald Trump from office or from the ballot four separate times — impeachment in 2019, impeachment in 2021, criminal indictment in 2023, and now this. Every single attempt has failed. Every single attempt has come without the democratic mandate to back it up.

Trump won the 2024 election. He won the popular vote. He won 312 electoral votes. He won because tens of millions of Americans looked at the Democratic Party’s record and chose differently. Kim’s response to that democratic verdict is to call for removal proceedings he knows will go nowhere — because his party has no policy wins to point to and no argument left to make.

This is what political desperation looks like when it borrows constitutional vocabulary it doesn’t intend to use.

Hamilton built the impeachment clause to be a last resort against genuine tyranny — a mechanism so serious, so destabilizing, that it would only be invoked when the evidence was overwhelming and the cause undeniable. Andy Kim just used it to generate a Wednesday news cycle.

A freshman senator with 15 months in office, no named offense, and zero path to execution just demanded the removal of a president 312 electoral votes put in the White House. Hamilton called that faction. You can call it whatever you want. Just don’t call it constitutional.

Source: Fox News

Omar Demands Trump’s Removal While Iran Watches: “Invoke the 25th Amendment. Impeach. Remove”

steve.straub@imgcs.com — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:21:51 +0000

Omar called the sitting president an “unhinged lunatic” — while U.S. forces are in an active standoff with Iran.
She was removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for antisemitism — and still lectures on who’s fit to conduct foreign policy.
Omar opposed the Soleimani strike. Opposed maximum pressure. Opposed the Iran Deal withdrawal. The pattern is 100%.
A bipartisan House vote stripped her from the committee that oversees Iran policy.
Tehran noticed. They always do.

There’s a pattern here. It isn’t subtle.

Every time Trump exercises American power against Iran — maximum pressure sanctions, the Soleimani strike, the current confrontation — the same Democrats line up to undermine him. Not after the fact. Not in quiet dissent. Publicly, loudly, at the exact moment adversaries are watching most closely.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) delivered the latest installment Monday, calling the sitting president an “unhinged lunatic” and demanding his removal from office while the United States is in an active standoff with Tehran.

This is not ok. Invoke the 25th amendment. Impeach. Remove.

This unhinged lunatic must be removed from office. pic.twitter.com/yoprhvqOE8

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) April 6, 2026

Think about the timing. Iran’s government is watching every signal coming out of Washington right now. Every crack in American resolve is an asset to them. And Omar handed them one — gift-wrapped.

This is the same Ilhan Omar who defended the Iran nuclear deal, opposed the Soleimani strike, and has consistently preferred the outcome that the Iranian regime prefers whenever Trump is the one making the call. It’s not a coincidence. It’s a record.

It’s also worth remembering how she lost her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Republicans moved to remove her in 2023 — and enough Democrats voted with them to make it happen — because of a documented pattern of antisemitic remarks. The committee that oversees American engagement with the Middle East. Gone.

She was removed from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for antisemitism — and she still thinks she gets to decide who’s fit to conduct American foreign policy.

Hamilton understood why this matters. In Federalist No. 75, he argued that foreign policy requires unified executive judgment precisely because divided counsel invites exploitation by adversaries. “The history of human conduct,” he wrote, does not justify trusting interests “of so delicate and momentous a kind” — America’s dealings with the rest of the world — to fractured, competing voices.

Hamilton was talking about structural design. But the principle applies directly to what Omar did Monday: a sitting congresswoman, during an active confrontation with a hostile regime, publicly calling for the removal of the commander-in-chief.

Tehran noticed. They always do.

Omar has every legal right to say what she said. The First Amendment is not in question here. What’s in question is the judgment of a legislator who looks at an escalating standoff with Iran and decides her most urgent priority is scoring points against a president she despises.

That’s not dissent. That’s not oversight. That’s choosing a side — and it isn’t ours.