Issue 224 Donation to the debt December 10, 2013

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has a special part of its website which allows people to donate their tax dollars toward the federal government. Now, not many people want to give any more money that they already do in taxes toward this hated government agency (no one likes paying taxes). So what about an alternative idea? An idea where the money is tax deductible and goes immediately to pay off the national debt.

The idea: It would work by first making the donation go toward paying off the debt owed by the United States. So any donation would go to pay off the massive debt that the government has now. To incentivize more people to donate, the donations would be tax deductible. So you are still paying the government, but in this case you are using that money to pay off the debt exclusively.

How it works: For one, these donations would not pay the interest on the debt. The money to pay the interest on the debt would come out of the Federal government first before all other spending. This insures Congress and the President do not cause our nation to shirk its responsibilities. Also, the money that gets donated will be used immediately to pay off parts of our national debt. So at no time will it ever be held in an account. This will ensure that the Congress does not get any funny ideas about borrowing from the fund like they do with Social Security and Medicare. The fact that it act as a charitable donation helps to relieve people of parts of their tax burden like a traditional charitable donation, but the twist is that it helps them as the government will have to spend much less to pay off the debt the next time around. As such, potentially we will be able to lower taxes because we will have less to pay toward the national debt.

Conclusion: Again, this is an idea. It takes an existing program and tweaks it to help solve a social ill. In this case the worst ill of all, the national debt. I would personally put the treasury in charge of all of this (if I were in charge that is) as they would subtract the yearly interest payments on the debt before all other spending and would also insure that the money donated goes to pay off the debt as soon as it comes in. Let's face it; if we leave it to the politicians our debt will just continue to grow. In fact, if you add the unfunded liabilities (money we know that we owe in the future) our 17 trillion in debt skyrockets to 112 trillion dollars. America, we have a lot of work to do. Let’s pay off the debt and do it now.