>It pales compared to the $3,000 a year in interest towards the national debt I'm responsible for.

Thinking of country-scale finances in the same way you think about personal finance is wrong in many ways. Take debt for example. As an individual, it's arguably best not to have debt at all. As a country, sovereign debt is the foundation of the world's money supply and fuels continuous economic growth.

Also, though the U.S. has $31 Trillion dollars of debt, $22 Trillion of that belongs to U.S. domestic traders.

If we were to cut our debt down to zero, we'd cripple ourselves with taxes and stifle growth. We'd have zero debt but we'd be sent into a massive economic depression, and that would likely ripple out across the planet.