James Lankford: It Could Take 460 Years to Eliminate the National Debt

"Let's do a good hypothetical. What if the next year after that we would have a $50 billion surplus? It'd be a pretty good surplus, a $50 billion surplus. How many years in a row would we have to have that $50 billion surplus before we paid off our debt? Any good guess? Correct answer would be 460 years in a row. If we had a $50 billion surplus 460 years in a row, approximately twice as long as we've been a country, then we can pay off our debt. I was stunned during the presidential debates and during the presidential conversation and whole process that we didn't hear hardly anything about debt and about deficit."