It depends on your time frame, I suppose. If we simply froze spending at current levels, eventually economic growth would catch up and pay off the debt. But it would take decades.

Cutting Medicare and Social Security in half, ratcheting back defense spending and repealing the tax cuts would make it happen a *lot* sooner. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm putting together a spreadsheet on using debt to stimulate the economy, so maybe I'll dig up those numbers while I'm at it.

Speaking of the spreadsheet, using some *extremely* generous assumptions, even if we froze spending it would take until 2016 merely to pay off the debt Bush has larded on in order to stimulate the economy. But that will be its own thread once I get some time.

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Man up.