Cutting the National Debt "It's time to clean up this mess." Famous last words heard from the mouths of many different politicians when talking about the national debt and the budget deficit. Our debt is currently $4.41 trillion and we have a budget deficit of around $300 billion and growing. Our government now estimates that by the year 2002 the debt will be $6.507 Trillion. While our politicians talk of balancing the budget , not one of them has proposed a feasible plan to start paying down the debt. In the early days of our government debt was considered to be a last resort. In 1790, when Alexander Hamilton, as secretary of the Treasury, made his first report on the nat