"Let no one say we weren't warned," Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) tweets.

The national debt must be addressed. More than $37 trillion in total U.S. public debt outstanding is a problem. That problem will continue until steps are taken to deal with it. As it grows at an increasingly steep pace, the problem becomes more burdensome, and what is needed to deal with it becomes more overwhelming.

A ballooning national debt has been a problem for many years. Too few politicians and elected leaders have discussed how to practically and actually deal with the problem, and too few have allocated political capital toward practically and actually dealing with it. The national debt debate should be a top political priority, and there should be a vigorous ongoing debate about what significant measures should be taken to rein it in. The center of the national debt debate should not be whether or not to do anything about the problem. The debt debate should not be about whether modest or significant measures should be taken to deal with it. The debate should concern what significant measures, policies that will unequivocally reduce the national debt, are most appropriate to deal with the problem.

The national debt bill must eventually be reconciled. The longer it is allowed to grow at an already steeper pace, the more expensive that bill becomes.