we've talked about this on numerous threads.   Economics 100: national debt is not like household debt. It is made up of many things, including long term infrastructure costs. The budgets that are talked about as "budget surplus" etc., are the rolling budgets of governments. My country (Canada) has been running budget surpluses for a number of years, but hardly any of the national debt has been paid down -- people talk about it from time to time (it has to do with whether longterm interest rates on government bonds etc, are flexible enough), but no one worries about it much in a reasonable country with some prospects of a future with a return on bonds.

The US is not in that state yet.

yours,

Peter T.