not hit new record levels. you. say there are three big reasons why this should matter to everybody out there. the potential impact on american consumers is higher mortgages, higher car loans, higher credit card payments. explain why you believe higher national debt leads to these three things. when the u.s. is borrowing, it means we re borrowing from somewhere else. one lucky thing we ve had is that interest rates have stayed low, because so many people want to lenned to the u.s. at the same time, we re seeing the entire world get overindebted. we don t know how long other countries will want to keep lenneding us or giving us this credit. if and when interest rates go up it would lead to additional spending of $190 billion a year