A Veteran Looks at Our National Debt

by Tom Barnes, Staff Writer 

How hard can it be to get out of debt?

At the risk of being accused of being incredibly naive, I pose a question to my brother and sister veterans. That is 25 million people, give or take a few hundred thousand. Can’t we just buy our way out of this? How about Debt Bonds being issued by the government along the same lines as the War Bonds of World War II?

This is how I see it working. It is not a normal investment. The best you can hope for is to gain the face value of the bond after it matures in 26 years. You buy a thousand dollar bond for $333.33 and then wait 26 years to collect the mature face value of $1,000.00 . There is no interest paid and frankly over 26 years you would lose probably about $250.00 dollars on your investment. But the payback here is that your grandchildren are not saddled with your debt. They get a relatively debt free start on their lives. And then they get the opportunity to drive the economy of their day into the ground like we just did so that they can do the same thing for their grandchildren. So, what do you think?

The main objection to this is that the Treasury gets stuck with the payoff debt that is incurred when the bonds are cashed. But how about this? What if a person who opts not to cash in on the bond gets an annual deferment of 5% on his federal income taxes for every $5,000.00 dollars worth of bonds he/she owns? The deferral would be able to be taken for one tax year after the bond matures (in 26 years).

So, what do you think?

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)