Who or what is causing the mountain of debt USA is sitting on.

I watched a Netflix movie about that topic. They say Wall Street. Intentionally. To create massive income for a handful of financiers. Started by Reagan, who deregulated the banking industry, and it has been building speed even now, creating a disparate society.

I'll give you 4 serious answers, because this is kind of a big complicated subject.

#1. Entitlements for retirees. Medicare, Social Security, and an aging population that's living longer than expected mean we're handing out more checks to senior citizens than we ever imagined. This will really get bad when the baby boomers all retire. Social Security is a pyramid scheme where, by 2035, there won't be enough taxpayers to pay for all the old people collecting SSI.

#2. The current depression we're in is hurting tax revenue. See the acclaimed documentary "Inside Job" to learn why it happened.

#3. Lack of incentives control costs in the medical industry leads to healthcare costs rising 10% a year, creating huge hikes for Medicare and Medicaid.

#4. The antitobacco agenda. The CATO institute published a study proving that smokers actually consume fewer healthcare dollars in total than the nonsmokers who live an average of 10 years longer. That's an extra 10 years of post-retirement upkeep paid for by Medicare, plus 10 years of SSI checks. This is a big part of the problem in #1 above.

5. Last and least, the GOP taxbreaks have hurt government revenues, especially in the last 12 years. The Bush tax cuts were allegedly intended to grow the economy, but we got lousy growth, compared to the 50's and 60's when taxes were way higher. Reaganomics doesn't work, and Republicans whining about high taxes right when taxes fall to a 50 year low prove their fiscal ideology is broken. But really, this only accounts for 2 or 3 trillion. Solving this problem still wouldn't solve the deficit problem permenently, due to #1, #3, and #4 above. It merely advances our doom by a couple years unless we cut all those entitlements for old people.

Congress's fear of not being re-elected....
It's math.... They know how much the debt it, they know how much income the tax base makes.... set the tax rate to pay off the debt... and STOP giving subsidies to corporations that donate to your re-election funds.

i can't prove it?!......but i'm pretty sure the Canadians are behind it

Mostly Bush and Obama

An administration that thinks it can borrow and spend it's way out of debt.

The government is representative of the populace..... for the last 20 years American citizens have over leveraged themselves and thought nothing of it... Some of those people work in government... and their personal philosophy extends to their job.

****** management of fiscal policy, governments need to think twice on how much they'll spend for the sake of maintaining economic growth -_-