The United States National Debt is the Amount of Money the United States has Created not Borrowed

==Burden of proof== Best case, my opponent proves that government debt equals the amount of money created, but he fails to prove that it is NOT money borrowed. He must prove both to win. If we don't owe the money to anyone, why would S&P downgrade our debt? Why would anyone worry we wouldn't pay them back if we're not "borrowing" as the resolution says. Absurd propositions require higher burdens of proof. ==M2== M2 does not include loans, just savings accounts and checking accounts. I cited a source for this already. ==Clinton== Another red herring from my opponent. Just because Clinton didn't cut spending to pay off debt with actual dollars, doesn't mean we COULDN'T do so. If we cut all military spending ($800 billion a year), we could obviously start paying off the national debt. I said as much in the previous round, but he keeps harping on Clinton as a distraction. ==The government credits our bank accounts== My opponent says the government borrows money then credits military bank accounts, assuming that every borrowed dollar ultimately ends up in the pocket of a US government employee. This is just entirely false. Where does government money go to service the debt? Into the Chinese government coffers, among others, proving that we do owe the money to someone and we did "borrow" it. ==Back to burden of proof== This has been a useless debate. My opponent essentially wanted to debate a truism, that when the government creates money on paper, it creates money on paper. I thought he wanted to debate his "perfect" analogy, that government debt is now like the gold standard: that it is solely responsible for creating money. Vote against him on conduct for morphing the debate. Since he can't prove that we're also not borrowing, he automatically loses. Dropped Voters. Vote Con if you agree that: 3) You believe the government can pay off its debt whenever it chooses to, without shrinking the amount of money in circulation. 4) You believe that Treasuries are sold for cash at the END POINT. Cash is traded for Treasuries, ultimately, and we use that cash to deficit spend (example, China buying our debt). 6) You believe that the Fed doesn't even need to issue debt to print money. It could just use a printing press, which is the whole point of the floating currency. The government can OBVIOUSLY create money without issuing debt. My opponent says that I have done no math in my rebuttal; I admire his accounting abilities, but debate is about logic, not math (especially when the math triple counts everything, which he concedes). No matter what, we can both think of US government debt as money created on a balance sheet (one descriptively accurate way of representing the debt, using archaic accounting jargon) OR as money that is borrowed. Both are equally valid ways of thinking. If the latter is not valid, we're all really silly to worry about countries like Greece not paying off their debt and about the US debt downgrade, since we don't actually owe money to anyone. It's a really FUN way to debate for my opponent to pick apart the points I make that he can disprove, like Clinton, and completely ignore the major issues in the debate, like the ability of the government to pay down debt if it wants to. Each of his rebuttals pretty much isolate 4 quotes that I made in my previous round and ignore every other issue. This has been a very frustrating and non-responsive debate.