So here are the scary facts that both political parties are ignoring, to our peril:  1. The current total national debt is 35 trillion dollars.  2. This amount increases by 1 trillion each year (the deficit.) Sometimes less sometimes more. (Last year it was 1.5 trillion.)  3. Our interest payments on the debt are a trillion a year. This represents 22% of our total annual government spending (4.5 trillion.)  4. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have any proposals to alleviate this in the slightest. Both parties propose massive more spending. Republicans propose more tax cuts in addition to the spending so they will actually increase the deficit far more. Democrats propose tax increases but coupled with their spending these will not be enough to significantly address this issue. Both parties seem to want to pretend that this issue doesn’t exist (though conservatives tend to talk about it more, but mainly as a tool to argue against specific liberal spending proposals.)  5. There will be a point, sometime in the future, when the amount of interest will be large enough to as to create a financial calamity in this country. How big, how catastrophic, nobody knows. But it IS coming at some point. 
  What to do?