Being deep in debt is a big problem for a country but not the worst thing ever. With a fair amount of fiscal discipline it's usually possible to dig out of debt as long as it's not such a huge multiple of GDP. About the worse thing a country can do to deal with big debt is to print money as that will create an inflationary spiral which is harder to get out of than just debt. Indeed, runaway inflation can wreck the economy and destroy GDP growth. And from a creditor's perspective being repaid in inflated dollars does not actually repay the value of the debt.
If the US were to try to inflate its way out of debt by printing money it would result in a tremendously fast crash of the US's credit rating.
So says the theory, yet Ben Bernanke has created hundreds of billions if not trillions of fresh cash and injected into the economy and we are not seeing runaway inflation. Sure, it's not used to pay down debt, but....you get the idea.
Fiscal discipline doesn't always work. See Greece. Greece has been enduring fiscal discipline for at least the last 12 - 18 months...but things only get worse. You can argue that is because Greece's situation is so bad, that the fiscal discipline it needs is more than it has gotten - but that is a tough line to argue because it's hard to know how much is enough. At some point, it becomes unproductive.
If the US were to try to inflate its way out of debt by printing money it would result in a tremendously fast crash of the US's credit rating.