Paying down the debt is pretty much the most uncontroversial position in the nation. The real questions are:

1) Who bears the burden (middle class, upper class, seniors, etc)

2) When you do it. Traditional economics say you pay when times are good, go into debt during the bad times. Pretty much the opposite of what we've been doing the last several years.

3) Aggressiveness. Do you risk a recession during shaky economic times when we are in no danger of defaulting? Or take things easy?

Answer these, then we can't get into the nastiness of specific policy.