The average "maturity" of the outstanding us debt is in the 5 to 10 year range. to be aggressive, let’s assume it is 10 years. go examine the history of the "10-year treasury constant maturity" rate from 1962 to today. roughly what has been the average rate that has prevailed over this period? what would happen to the annual amount of interest that the federal government would owe its creditors if the interest rate instantaneously shot from its current effective level to the long-term average you computed in part (a)? (note that i find this highly implausible, but over a long period of time there is a non-zero chance that something like this would be reason to be concerned).consider your answer to (b) to be a way to think about the possibility of a federal budget "pac-man." with no changes to any of the "mandatory" parts of our federal budget and no changes to defense spending, what would this change do to the "discretionary" portion of the budget? (for your own reference, look at the dollar increase in interest and compare it to the total spent on each of the "discretionary" items in the budget). i’d remind you that if you see a figure like $70 billion spend on education out of the discretionary budget, that is nowhere near what governments, at all levels, including mandatory payments, spend on education.