There you go again, George Will, fretting needlessly about National 'Debt'

(c) by Mark Dempsey

George Will's latest column excoriates even his fellow "conservatives" for failing to address the problem of National 'Debt'... as though all U.S. citizens owe that debt to...well, someone.

But the truth is that National 'Debt' is like bank debt. Your bank account is your asset, but to the bank, it's a liability, a debt. Lobbying for a reduction in National 'Debt' is roughly like marching down to the bank to demand that the bank reduce it's debt to depositors...and make their accounts smaller. It's certainly not sensible.

So it's our central bank--the Federal Reserve--who owes the debt, and what it owes is a dollar's worth of relief from an inevitable liability--taxes. Reducing National 'Debt' is something Will explicitly equates with reducing social safety nets like Social Security and Medicare. We must cut Grandma's pension and healthcare, says Will, because bank debt is bad, and our assets are too large.

[submitted as a letter to the "liberal" Sacramento Bee, which republished Will's column]