I see the problem from an exactly opposite perspective. We need to make Americans acutely aware of the fact that their federal government can, as the monopoly issuer of the nation’s fiat currency, provide for common needs without regard for revenue and is only limited by available resources.
Bernie is fully aware of how our currency works and only suggests taxing wealthy individuals and highly profitable corporations to reduce their influence in our policies, not as “payfors” for his programs. Those taxes should be applied whether or not spending on the public purpose is called for as concentrated wealth threatens our democratic process.
The US dollar is a creation of law, a unit of measure to denominate prices and contracts, not a finite “thing” kept in a vault at Treasury. Taxation provides the universal need in the private sector for the currency, drawing resources into commerce to be available to government to provision itself without a revenue stream. It also allows the government to control the total money supply to avoid price inflation. It is never revenue for government spending.
Only deficit spending can provide a store of value in commerce (savings) and fund economic growth, so using the economy to service a “budget” by balancing taxation to spending is a fool’s errand that is not even possible for a net importer that allows wealth accumulation. So is the concept of “borrowing” to fund spending, as the money must be spent into the economy before it is even available to borrow or collect as taxes.
“ALL” revenue received by the federal government is balanced to zero by the debt upon receipt, not recycled to “fund” anything. Federal spending creates public (government) sector debt equal to dollars created in the private sector. That debt destroys any dollars that enter the public sector from the private sector. Anyone capable of a deep dive into Treasury and Fed accounting could find that the dreaded “national debt” is always in balance with the “net” (after bank debt is settled) money supply. It is our accumulated savings, not an actual debt.
Sans a gold reserve to defend, Treasury bonds are less than useless as a funding source and should be eliminated simply because they present fodder for fear and propaganda, although the interest payments they accrue are no harder to pay for than any other spending for Congress and are simply net injections of public money into the economy. Making monetary and fiscal policy around errant assumptions, myths, and propaganda is how we got where where are, not the path to revitalizing our economy.
