Struggling to contain the economic fallout from the pandemic, central bankers have realized that keeping interest rates low and maintaining hundreds of billions in monthly asset purchases (ie. quantitative easing), have not given the desired economic boost; now they are counting on fiscal policy, ie., government spending, to do the trick.
However, the US government does not have the money, so they borrow (print) it, at current rock-bottom interest rates.
A $3 trillion budget deficit is predicted for 2021, nearly as high as 2020's $3.1 trillion, and more than double 2019's $984 billion. The US government under President Trump spent $4.5 trillion on pandemic-related relief, helping to boost the national debt to $28 trillion. This was followed in 2021 with President Biden's $1.9 trillion covid-19 relief package, dubbed the American Rescue Plan, which passed Congress and has his signature.
The debt-to-GDP ratio is an important metric economists use for comparing a country's total debt to its gross domestic product (GDP).