yeah, it definately does need to be cut somewhat, but more importantly are some other numbers that need to be changed. The trade defecit, and the overall defecit. In comparison to those two numbers the actual national debt holds relatively little importance, except to shock people because whoever wants to shock someone can always say "We're X trillion in debt, BOOGIDY BOOGIDY BOO!"
The reason people are losing faith in whether we can pay off our debts is because of the defecit and the trade defecit. It's well known that our current economic policy makers believe in the trickle down effect, but considering our current trade defecit, anyone using the slightest amount of logic can just look and see that none of that money is making it down to American citizens of average or below average income, and thus we might as well take these tax cuts, write a check, and send it to China.
And the defecit shows we won't be even able to repay our debt, completely ignoring whether we would if we had the opportunity. Talking about paying off the debt was meritted during the Clinton era, cause we had a surplus, but paying off debt as we go furthur into debt is just proposterous.
The main problem is that neo-conservatives don't believe that defecits are important. No, dead seriously, I read the Neo-Con Reader, which has writtings from all sorts of prominant neo-cons, and all the random crap that spews out of their so-called "brains". And included is their belief that defecits aren't an important number, and they won't believe that it's an important number despite all of the proof that it is, most notably the plummeting value of the dollar, and trust me, if the other main currency wasn't the Euro, we'd be a lot worse off right now, but since it's a multi-national currency, we have to be pretty bad to raise against it (which is funny that we were actually dropping against it for a while!)