In 55 of the last 59 years, the federal government spent more money than it received in tax revenue. To finance this annual deficit, Treasury bonds, usually maturing in 10 or 20 years, were sold.
The entire concept of deficit/debt, as it applies to the monopoly "issuer" of our currency is flawed. Consequently, any policy that emanates from that concept will be flawed as well. This should be simple logic, but it isn't. Millions have been spent to promote the misconception and politicians have repeated it endlessly, so you don't have to feel bad about being duped.
A sovereign currency-issuing government creates money by "fiat", meaning the act of spending "funds" itself. Treasury debt is only a service to investors and a tool to help the Fed hit its target interest rates. What it "never" is, is a funding mechanism for government spending. In fact, the deficit spending of the government "funds" Treasury bond purchases, not the other way around.
Regardless of who holds the bonds, the federal government has overspent by nearly $30 trillion.
The way to see this is that the federal government has "created" $30 trillion in monetary assets in the private sector that it didn't claw back in taxation and destroy. This is money that is required to net retire private bank debt or net save. It is compensation for our commerce, trading real resources and labor, with our government for dollars. A "balanced" budget doesn't allow for such payment and effectively steals those resources and labor from the private sector, leaving no store of value from our productivity.
Passing spending bills that add to the deficit and public debt will both raise the annual interest expense the government pays on that debt. As interest rates rise and the debt is rolled over and increased, the interest expense will reach $1 trillion annually.
A simple fix for this, even though it isn't a problem, is to stop issuing Treasury bonds for deficit spending. It doesn't actually fund that spending anyway and is mostly just welfare for the already wealthy and banks. We do it all of the time for much of our war and disaster costs, so there are mechanisms allowing it.
The sensible solution would be to raise the debt ceiling more modestly. Reduce the infrastructure bill to about $600 billion, which is all that is needed for real infrastructure. And then, not passing any more spending, until economic growth generates more tax revenue.
Tax "revenue" is an oxymoron for regular morons. This would mean we have to remove a dollar from the economy for every dollar we put back and only spend 1/10th of what projections estimate the cost of updating our "physical" infrastructure to be, and that would be spread over 10 years.
Welcome to America, the richest third world country on the planet. Had we not listened to your deficit hawk nonsense we would not be in the hole with our infrastructure and not need such extreme investment. Yours is the thinking that caused the problem, and as everyone knows, that is unlikely to be the thinking that solves it.
The public debt represents a big hole for the American public. The first thing to do when you are stuck in a hole is to stop digging.
The public debt represents the dollars our government has not taxed away, leaving some store of value in the private sector. It is the result of our past productivity, not a mortgage on future productivity. No one is going to "repay" it and it isn't a problem that our kids will have to deal with. We aren't leaving them a "debt". We are leaving them US dollars in savings and all of the things purchased with those dollars for the "common welfare", as Congress is mandated to do in our Constitution.
