OK. So why does “pay for” have to be in quotes? Do you have the correct or real explanation for it? What does it mean to exchange money for an item on sale? In other words: commercial transaction.

When you send in your tax payments it has no relationship to federal spending. The fact that you owe a tax and pay it with the government’s sovereign currency (the only way possible) means the currency used has completed its intended lifecycle and cannot then go on to pay for anything. Tax payments cancel the debt that created them, balancing both to zero, and only reduce the total of currency in the private sector. We “owe” whatever taxes are levied against us, but the Treasury “owes” us credit to enable paying those in aggregate, which is all the national debt is. It serves as a store of value for our commerce, a way to save, and provides us the ability to net retire private bank debt.

To the federal government, money IS nothing but a tax credit that it exchanges for the goods and services it purchases from the private sector. The government does the “paying for” public spending, not the private sector. Money cannot exist in the government sector and federal debt obligations cannot exist that encumber the private sector. This makes it impossible to pre-fund any federal spending via taxation or any other method involving collecting or borrowing from the private sector.

So, what is it that is being paid, when we pay? Money, right?

The money is a self-funding commodity that Congress is mandated to use to organize the society around the government’s currency that it can create without limit from revenue. Congress can afford anything that potentially exists without incurring inflation, so the use of resources/labor is the only restriction on spending that improves the quality of life in our society. Congress never “needs” its own money back to enable it to purchase anything in the future. I does, however, need us to need its money, and occasionally to have less of it, which is what taxes accomplish.