Looking at this number in a vacuum and not in light of total spending/borrowing, and looking at it in a linear scale, makes this not as interesting. To be clear

Looking at this number in a vacuum and not in light of total spending/borrowing, and looking at it in a linear scale, makes this not as interesting. To be clear, this is a huge number and generally government debt is the problem. But this is a record amount of debt only because EVERY YEAR is a record amount of debt. The article says that this "represent[s] the fastest growth in the amount of maturing debt since the Financial Crisis", but that's not true. Looking at the numbers, this represents a 10.0% increase from the previous year but 2012 gave us 10.7%. 2008, 2009, and 2010 represent bigger jumps, but you can argue that the financial crisis extended to 2010 (although you can argue that it's still not really over now -- definitions are hard). Pre-crisis we had 2003 13.5%, 2002 12.5%.