Agreed.I believe we can all agree, from right to left, that this debt is in fact phony debt. Even the progressive/leftist The New Republic (Ron Paul) agrees that this is a painless solution that would reduce the debt by $1 trillion and would give Congress needed time to address this issue.
In fact, much of this crisis is political contrivance.
IMO it's more an attempt at enforcing some fiscal discipline on the biggest spenders the world has ever seen before we begin to be taken no more seriously than Greece.