I'd be careful about running too far with that argument. Of the debt you've flagged as not "real", that would include ~$3T owed to the OASDI trust funds. On th

I'd be careful about running too far with that argument. Of the debt you've flagged as not "real", that would include ~$3T owed to the OASDI trust funds. On the one hand: Yes, that represents a debt the US government owes to itself, and in a very real sense is not real. The SSA could announce they were tearing up the debt, and boom, the US national debt has now dropped by a hefty chunk! On the other hand: That money is slated to pay social security beneficiaries. Tearing up the debt doesn't make the retirees go away, nor the obligations of the system. Assuming that the social security checks still go out, then cancelling that debt has done nothing. The same is true of all of the rest of the debt too. "It's owed to a state government, it's not real!" True, but the state government is counting on getting that money. If they don't, they'll need to source it from somewhere else (via some mixture of taxation and cuts).