alt Hacker News"because inflating our currency to pay for them could result in functionally not being able to import goods required to run our economy."
You can't inflate your currency to payoff a debt that's due in in a different currency. As soon as you inflate your currency, the exchange rate changes.
The US issues debt in dollars and repays those debts in dollars. The purchasing power of dollars can change due to inflation. If you suddenly increase the global supply of dollars by 2x, dollars that existed prior to the increased supply will be able to purchase less.