Nobody is proposing to pay off THE MORTGAGE. All that has to be covered if the monthly payments.
This miscomprehension of Gross debt versus ongoing payments is a purposeful deception. Don’t buy into it.
You can probably carry your mortgage but have no ability to pay it back in full on short notice.
Sorry, I misunderstood what you were proposing. I am quite clear on the difference between the cost of debt servicing and the debt itself. That’s also why the budget deficit is actually a more important concern than the gross debt. Shrinking the deficit to zero will eventually allow us to pay off the gross debt, the same way as ceasing to charge new items on a credit card will allow you to eventually pay off that credit card balance.
All that said, however, adding another new tax and giving the government more money to piss away is probably not such a good idea. If they would actually use it for debt service, that’s one thing. However, what’s the odds that they’ll just put the new revenue stream into the general treasury and then declare that we can now afford new or expanded entitlement programs since there’s more revenue coming in?