Kind of buried by the Covid bill, but in a few days we'll probably start hearing more about CBO's long-term budget projections, which will have fiscal scolds fulminating 1/ cbo.gov/publication/57…
The debt projections look big, for those worried about that kind of thing 2/ 
But it will be important to understand what's driving those projections. Some of it is entitlement spending, but mostly it's projected interest payments (I start from 2024, after the Covid bulge is over) 3/
So what's driving those debt service projections? You might think it's snowballing debt: more debt leading to more interest burden leading to even more debt. But nooooo ... 4/
Mostly it's just the assumption — and it's just an assumption — that the interest rate on federal debt will rise drastically, back to levels we haven't seen since before the 2008 financial crisis 5/
If you believe, as I think you should, that we're in a protracted era of low rates/savings glut, this is unreasonable. And in any case, you shouldn't read CBO as saying that "we're on an unsustainable path" That's not what it says 6/
What it says is that interest payments could become a bigger deal if for some reason, which is hard to specify, federal borrowing costs rise to levels we haven't actually seen for many years. Doesn't quite have the same ring ... 7/
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