So, I had a conversation with neighbors — sophisticated people! — who read this piece and thought that "The Times says that interest payments have gone from $400 billion to $1 trillion." They didn't realize that it was an opinion piece by a Republican 1/ nytimes.com/2020/02/18/opi…
And it was a Republican who had his facts wrong. CBO projects a much smaller rise in interest payments *over a decade* — and most relevant, it projects a rise from 1.8 to 2.6 percent of GDP, which isn't that scary 2/ cbo.gov/publication/56…
Furthermore, a lot of that projection is driven by the assumption that interest rates will rise a lot — to 3% on average in the 2nd half of this decade, v 1.5% now. That's a very dubious assumption 3/ cbo.gov/publication/56…
This is how the public debt zombie keeps lurching along — fed by media coverage that still gives deficit scolds a platform not justified by the quality of their arguments 4/
Oh, and for perspective: projected interest payments will still be well below their level under Reagan and Bush I 5/ 
