The debt ceiling needed to be moved through to 2013 to prevent another potentially catastrophic game of chicken. It's an issue that's easy to demagogue, with an impact of triggering a larger depression if the ceiling isn't lifted in a timely manner.
No one is projecting trillion dollar deficits indefinitely. The reason the deficit spiked is because revenues plummeted when the economy plummeted, along with comparatively small automatic stabilizers and fiscal stimulus.
I hold some treasuries as part of my retirement, and will continue to do so. The debt of the US has been and remains the safest in the world, notwithstanding the insanity of a few members of Congress.
Finally, our economic situation will only end in disaster if we collectively allow it to do so. We need to bring our revenues and spending into line in the medium-long term, but austerity measures in the short term only make that harder. We need to get the economy moving again, and we need to curb health-care spending in the medium-long term (perhaps with less demagoguery about "death panels"), neither of which will be helped by wasting human capital in the name of fiscal self-flagellation.