But, is it excessive.............................................?

 “A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.”
-Alexander Hamilton

“No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.”
-George Washington

“It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises.”
-James Madison

“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” 
-Herbert Hoover

“We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”
-Ronald Reagan

"I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office."
-Barack Obama