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You do not need to run a surplus to pay back government debt. Debt payments are and will be included in the regular annual budget of the U.S. government.

In fact an annual surplus creates additional government debt because the only place the U.S. federal government can store profit is in U.S. Treasury bonds (see: the Social Security "trust fund"). This is why there was so much interest in refunding the surplus to taxpayers.

Now is a great time for the U.S. to be borrowing, because everyone wants to give us their money. Treasury yields continue to hover well below their historical averages. Even at long-run average rates of economic growth and inflation, we will stay ahead of today's Treasury yields and afford our payments.

So: your numbers might be accurate (I don't have the time to check them), but your assumption that we can never pay our debt is flawed.



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