Todd, do you honestly believe the United States is at risk of running out of its own currency? Think about that. The U.S. government is the sole issuer of the U.S. dollar, it’s not collecting dollars from somewhere else, which means it can never be "broke" in the way you and I can. Our families, our households, we use the currency. We don’t issue it. We can go broke; the government can’t. Your fear that the "national debt" is going to bankrupt us is ******* ridiculous. The only real question is how much of our country’s unused capacity = workers, resources, factories, we want to put to use without causing inflation.
When we talk about cutting government programs because we’re supposedly “too far in debt,” it’s like saying a carpenter can’t measure any more wood because he’ll run out of inches. We use dollars to mobilize real resources to do real things, like education, infrastructure, and health care. That’s why the "national debt" could just as well be viewed as our national surplus of dollars we’ve spent into the economy but haven’t taxed back yet. You don’t want to slash programs people rely on based on a misunderstanding that we might “run out” of something we create in the first place. We need to focus on what’s possible and beneficial, how many teachers, nurses, and infrastructure projects we can fund without pushing up inflation.
Cutting vital programs in the name of “fixing the debt” makes zero sense when that so-called debt is simply the result of the federal government putting more dollars into the economy than it subtracts in taxes. Those dollars end up in people’s pockets, bank accounts, and investments. If you insist on shrinking that “debt” through austerity, you’re actually draining those dollars from the private sector and hurting people and communities. So let’s stop throwing around scary headlines about the debt and start asking how to use our resources effectively and productively. Because the problem is never about “affording” something in purely financial terms, when you issue your own currency, there’s no shortage of digits in a spreadsheet. The real constraints are workers, materials, technology, and the environment. That’s it. So no, Todd, the national debt doesn’t justify slashing government programs. We’re not running out of money.