Huh. Ireland’s is about 2.5% (3.1bn on 119bn budget next year). Slightly puzzled at what’s going on with the US debt; that does seem very expensive. Though it’s not _entirely_ comparing like for like, in that states have their own separate budgets in the US (local authorities in Ireland do too, but their own revenue raising capabilities are very limited and most of the money comes from central government).

Looks like the US’s cost of servicing works out to about 3.4%, which definitely seems rather high (though, probably still not high enough that you’d necessarily want to aggressively pay it down; 3.4% isn’t a _great_ return). Actually, I’d wonder how much of this is related to the debt ceiling stuff; I would assume that makes refinancing when debt is cheap more difficult.