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First you’re getting the numbers wrong.

Our total debt is $14T. Our publicly held debt is $9T. The difference, $5T, is intra-governmental held debt and, as you correctly say, not important because we won’t pay our own debt. (As an economic aside, note that the people who charged the debt, our grandparents, can’t pay it to the people who need it, our parents. That’s a thinker.)

There IS something magical about the (publicly held) debt to GDP ratio. Bond holders typically refuse to lend when it gets around 100%. We don’t know when our bond holders will refuse to lend but the past is prologue. It will depend on the confidence they have in our ability to pay at that time. They will have no confidence when interest rates rise to the point that new debt cannot be paid without defaulting on old debt.

Our current debt to GDP ratio is $9T/$14T x 100% = 64%. Under Obama’s $1.4T annual deficit plan, we will add 10% per year, leaving us three years to default. Under the Republican’s $1.1T plan, we will add 8% per year, leaving us five years to default. This time to failure calculation assumes that our current historically low interest rates stay historically low. They won’t and and must go up exponentially, the closer we get to 100%.

Personally what I have learned in my life is to get from denial to acceptance as quickly as I can. Bargaining is the hardest step. To get past it, I do what I can do to be as certain as I need to be that there is a problem that needs to be solved. Then it’s just a matter of character.

As for politicians accepting this problem, Patrick Henry saw this situation coming. At the time the states were being asked to consolidate under one government to pay off the debts from the Revolutionary war. Patrick Henry looked at the proposed constitution, saw a fundamental problem with it and said,

“I say they may ruin you; for where, sir, is the responsibility? The yeas and nays will show you nothing, unless they be fools as well as knaves; for, after having wickedly trampled on the rights of the people, they would act like fools indeed, were they to publish and divulge their iniquity, when they have it equally in their power to suppress and conceal it.

Where is the responsibility—that leading principle in the British government? In that government, a punishment certain and inevitable is provided; but in this, there is no real, actual punishment for the grossest mal-administration. They may go without punishment, though they commit the most outrageous violation on our immunities.”

He was right, they are knaves but not fools. They will obscure the truth as much as they can. Why do you think they spend so much time pointing fingers at each other? The only reason they get away with that is because voters have forgotten that in our system of government, only the House is responsible for what the House allows. The House Republicans will have only the House Republicans to blame if/when we default.

I don't have the numbers wrong. Economists disagree about the importance of the Intragovernmental Holdings portion of the debt, but it is imnportant to understand that this debt is also interest bearing. And when SS goes into the red as it has this past year and this year and peramently in 2016, the non-market T-bills in the Trust Fund will have to be redeemed by the USG from the General Fund to pay benefits. The government must come up with real money by borrowing it or reducing spending elsewhere. The Intragovernmental Holdings represent an unfunded liability, which is why it is included in the total national debt.

There is not doubt that our bond ratings and interest rates to borrow will increase. Japan's debt is over 125% of GDP now. That is the danger we face with increasing our national debt, i.e., the debt servicing costs and rising interest rates. It is a downward spiral.

What you seem to be missing is that Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling in three months not three years. The debt ceiling applies to our total debt including the publicly held debt and intragovernmental holdings. We can keep on raising the ceiling as we done for many years rather than default. That brings its own dangers, but as long as we keep printing money, we can pay our debts, albeit with a declining dollar.

There is plenty of blame to go around including the American people who are uninformed and unengaged. Most would prefer to keep receiving government handouts without understanding that we can no longer afford to do so. The people don't want the politicians to treat them as adults nor do they want to feel the pain of the decisions that must be made.

By 2030, one in five residents in this country will be 65 or older, twice what it is now. The baby boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 a day and will continue to do so for the next 20 years. In 1950 there were 16 workers for every retiree; today it is 3.3; and by 2030 it will be just two. The welfare state has bankrupted us.