In an earlier post on federal spending I pointed out that the federal government can't bail out the states forever.

Today I want to take a look at federal interest payments. With federal debt soaring, it is not surprising that federal interest payments are also soaring. The nearby chart shows that by 2019 federal interest payments will grow by a whopping 146 percent to $622 billion in 2019, from $253 billion in 2008.

To put this into perspective, spending on the Department of Defense will grow by only 16 percent to $689 billion in 2019 from $593 billion in 2008. Astonishingly, defense spending will only exceed interest payments in 2019 by a mere $67 billion.

The question is, what will America have to show for all this interest spending?