I suppose that’s fair, but kind of tangential. The point I was making was that if discretionary spending, approximately 25% of outlays, could be completely cut we would still have a deficit. I’m not suggesting this is even possible, I’m merely using it as a demonstration of the scale of the problem.

Fair enough.

I'd still quibble with your whole framing though. For example:

> This is a trillion dollars that cannot be used to provide government services.

I don't know if you have a mortgage, but assuming you do, is it useful to say of the interest payments you make on that "this is X dollars that cannot be used to buy food, heat, gas or streaming services" ? I suggest that it is not, and for reasons that apply to government too.

Capital investments, and debt more broadly, comes in good, bad and indifferent varieties. Some portion of the US national debt arises from spending on "good" things, some on "bad" things and quite a bit on "indifferent" things. There's no point in (accurately) noting that a mortgage payer cannot use the money they pay in interest to pay for other things, because we (broadly) accept that borrowing money in order to own your own home is sensible and comes with lots of its own utility/value. Whatever portion of US national debt arises from "good" spending can be viewed in the same manner.

Of course, how the actual apportionment between good/bad/indifferent spending is described will vary with political outlook and many other things, so there's no single answer to the question "how much of the national debt is a good thing". But it's certainly some of it ...