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The astronomical debt load that President Biden inherited should hang as a specter above our national politics. It should mean that current taxing and spending decisions are made with full regard to the amount of money that we already owe lenders, rather than with regard to how we would like our government to tax and spend in an ideal world. Yet, in practice, our existing debt load means that the federal government will spend an increasingly large percentage of each year’s federal budget simply paying for previous years’ spending choices. Our large debt also makes us reliant on low interest rates that may not be sustainable and hamstrings our ability to respond to large scale crises down the road, such as another economic downturn, pandemic, natural disaster or war.