We are not the ones saddled with paying it off. This is the biggest myth in Politics today. Government bond transactions are settled in us dollar reserves. Reserves come from government spending. That's the only place they come from. As a point of logic, the reserves used to purchase government bonds comes from government spending in the first place. Tax revenue does not fund the federal government. Neither does bond sales. Federal Government is self-funded. The private sector provides goods and services to the federal government in exchange for dollars. Modern Monetary Theory explains all of this. Read Mosler's "The 7 deadly innocent frauds of economic policy" its free in pdf form. http://moslereconomics.com/2009/12/10/7-deadly-innocent-frau...