PD, I disagree with the premise of even bothering with our debt. It's elimination or reduction does nothing economically positive. The reason for that is those who we owe won't call in full payment because their nations are heavily dependant upon our economy to begin with (China is a great example - they own billions in T-bills).
Our national debt, as high as it is, is completely manageable and is, in fact, one of the only reasons we allow such high trade-deficits to exist. Nations are fearful of calling in their T-Bills because our response would naturally be to revoke their PNTR status (Permanantly Normalized Trade Relations, formerly Most-Favored Nation status). Basically, we're telling nations such as China that, we'll buy a ton of your goods while not requiring your markets to be equally open to us, if you don't call in our debt.
Furthermore, I wholly disagree that our government exists through tax dollars, at least not in the international economic sense. Foreign nations care about the buying power of Americans.
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