Another way to put it. If we decided, technically we could buy back all treasury bonds from the market with money that didn’t exist yesterday (see QE that I linked previously, also google open market operations). The debt would go to zero. There is literally no technical reason not to do this. But, that would destroy money markets and the exchange rate of the USD, so we would need to stop buying goods from other countries, which would stop the economy… so it would be a very bad move. But I just want to make the point through that US government debt is really not like your family credit card debt.