Debt can be restructured, conceivably even defaulted on.
Unfunded liabilities cannot be restructured, and defaulting on them is generally held to be political suicide.
This is why the Fed will indeed happily print ever larger denominations of Ben Bernanke ClownBucks to meet liabilities. They will do anything to avoid the pain of amputation.
What the writer misses is that Hyperinflation is the easy way out. That's why it happens.
Appendix: I mentioned 'pay and pensions for Government workers' at the top because it was the Weimar Government's inability to cut away these liabilities that led to their disastrous money printing. For them, destroying the whole country was easier than a default on Government liabilities, and so that is what happened.
I agree with your assessment.
The writer is an idiot.
Of course unfunded liabilities are the problem.
And of course inflation (maybe not hyper, but definitely inflation) is the PLANNED SOLUTION.
What other way is there?
(Excluding free market solutions, which virtually no one in government is interested it. Just a few of the more “radical” “Republicans”.)