America's debt has crossed a striking threshold.

It's now bigger than the economy itself.

Questions about what that means start to take shape when interest enters the picture.

As the cost of carrying debt grows, its impact becomes harder to ignore.

So what should we do about the national debt and just how worried should we really be?

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excert. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Tuesday, May 19th,

2026. Join me to talk about the impact of the scale of U.S. borrowing and what it likely means for

future generations is Mark Goldwine, senior policy director at the committee for responsible federal budget.

It's so good to speak with you, Mark.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Mark, for decades, the national debt was treated as a major political and economic threat.

Today, the numbers are dramatically larger, but it feels as if the political and public urgency has waned. Is this an instance of politicians

just wanting to, again, kick the can down the road rather than do the hard work of figuring out

how to fix it? This is a great question. So I think a few things are going on. First of all,

as you mentioned, the debt is massive. But over the last 15 years, we saw debt run up pretty significantly, you know, after the global financial crisis and didn't see the immediate consequences in terms of higher interest rates, inflation, things like that.

So I think politicians, they got a little bit cocky, for lack of a better word, that it couldn't hurt them.

Now, since then, we saw the great inflation in, you know, 2021, 2022. A lot of that was deficit-driven. And now we're seeing interest rates at new highs. A lot of that is debt-driven. And so politicians should, in fact, be really worried about this. But I think they a little bit learns the wrong lessons of the 2010s. That's a bit of it. The other bit of this is exactly what you say. Deficit reduction is hard.

It requires telling somebody they either need to pay more in taxes, receive less than government

services, or have lower benefits. Those are not popular positions. It's a lot easier to put

your head in the sand, get through the next election, and make

the next generation somebody else's problem.

When economists worry about us carrying debt larger than the economy, what are they actually

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