How should the US government deal with its rising national debt and associated interest payments?

Raise taxes (10%) – "Corporations have been making record breaking profit; reducing the corporate tax rate to 25% was a huge mistake that was ALWAYS going to lead to an increased national debt and eventually levying more taxes on Americas middle class to balance the books. The corporate tax rate needs to be increased again."

Cut spending (39%) – "Our spending laws are broken right now. Federal agencies are encouraged to spend to their budget limit, and essentially disincentived not to. I think we need impoundment reform, which would restore the president's ability to return unspent monies back to the treasury, rather than force agencies to spend as much as possible. This change would restore a much needed check and balance. Congress has the authority to allocate money to budgetary line items. The President should be able to decide if it's a good idea to spend that much. Many times goals can be reached under budget. Why not save that away for later, rather than spend it needlessly?"

• "Once working in a government position I noticed one glaring problem. If you didn't spend your allotted budget money in the fiscal year, your next year's budget amount would be reduced. Nobody wanted a reduction so they spent millions needlessly and applied for a larger amount for the following year during the last part of the fiscal year. The actual budget deserved being reduced because the last quarter of spending was frivolous waste."

"Less people are having children, so how will this possibly be paid for with a smaller tax base? People are over taxed as it is. The US needs to quit trying to run the whole world and spend our money in our own country without borrowing from other nations and/or supporting other nations."

• "Politicians have to stop spending trillions to 'buy votes' and we have to be more aware of how money is being managed when spent. Contractors always seem to have cost overruns and are often not accountable for costly mistakes; this needs to stop. Government needs to be more streamlines with duplicate programs ended along with duplicate government agencies whose responsibilities overlap. Politics must become less powerful in government with direction coming from the Constitution and the law to limit government in every capacity and spending along with it."

Print more bonds/money to cover interest (4%) – "We need to invest in our infrastructure. That helps our lenders too, who presumably would like to see us become stronger partners."

Some combination of the above (35%) – "There is no silver bullet, changes need to be made on various fronts, many of which are not politically well viewed. For the long-term health of the countries budget, short term belt tightening and adjustments need to be made, these are generally unpopular with candidates and much of the population who have short term needs, but if not addressed the issue will continue to spiral out of control."

• "Like most western democracies whose debt is too high, a combination of increasing taxes (particularly for corporations and high income earners -think $350+) and reducing their spending, and increasing revenue streams from federal companies. Without tackling their debt in this way the federal government is no better than an individual drowning in debt but unwilling to make the hard choices to fix the problem."

"There needs to be some fiscal responsibility here. Our politicians are running campaigns on tax cuts, increased spending on border security, military, and social programs, and loan forgiveness. All of these things play well in the media, but in reality, something has got to give. It won't help you get elected if you say you're going to balance the budget and to do that we are going to have to cut programs and raise taxes. If we don't start doing something now, the problem is going to become so sizeable, that there will be no way to control it. That will ultimately compromise national security and our economic standing in the world."

• "The answer is not and will never be "print more money," but the principles of cutting expenses and increasing income holds true from the lowly household budget to the lofty halls of the country's budget. This is going to hurt at some point. We like to think it won't, because as people we easily fall into the hothands fallacy (what has been happening will continue to happen) but that doesn't work with money. Eventually, there will be a reckoning. There must be. It would be better to get ahead of the huge hurt and start managing this now, while the hurt is both under our control and manageable, than later, when there are no other options."

Nothing needs to be done (6%) – "The national debt can be addressed relatively easily with a little desire from lawmakers. It's a mostly overblown issue."

Unsure/other (6%) – "I think one of the most important things we should do is close tax loopholes for the ultra wealthy and large corporations. They need to pay their fair share instead of placing even more of the burden (by raising taxes on or cutting spending on programs used by) the poor and middle classes/small businesses."