2013, page-27

sure, but even if politicians decide not to raise the debt ceiling, for some bizarre reason, there's still a massive jump to a US default. US pays only $250Bn interest on its debt (2013 budget), and only $100Bn to foreign interests ($11Bn of the $16Bn is owned by US interests such as the FED, insurance funds, social security, etc), so if the debt ceiling were not able to be raised, and the US was forced instantly to balance the budget by reducing the $3.8T spend down to the $2.2T tax revenue, "defaulting" would only save $100Bn and be the last thing they would do. The $1T in military spend would be a much better place to make inroads, or of course increasing the tax collection from the current 15% of GDP.