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Most governments run at defecit most of the time, no big deal.

Tell that to your state govenor. I'd like to see some support for your contention...the US government has been either in balance or surplus for most years (historically). But, that is not really a good reason for balance - I just thought I'd mention it.
Anever-ending cycle of debt is fine in theory, but sooner or later someone will have to pay the piper (common sense).

That's the glory of t-bills, the piper is the American people, and they get paid 20 years later.

If we could force the government to balance the budget by cutting spending that would be great, but the silly balanced budget rules put in place never bothered with that. In the end all they've done is give the government a great excuse to raise taxes because they "have to balance the budget".

According to the Treasury Dept America has by and large been in debt since day 1, we might not have beed deficit spending at a specific time (still looking at that) but we were carrying debt.
[Question] What caused the debt that United States now has?

[Answer] The total public debt is largely a legacy of war, economic recession, and inflation. It represents the accumulated deficits in the Government's budgets over the years. The United States first got into debt in 1790 when it assumed the Revolutionary war debts of the Continental Congress. At the end of 1790, the gross public debt was approximately $75 million. For a brief period in the mid-1830's the public debt was virtually zero. At the start of World War I in 1916, the public debt was $1 billion. It then rose to a peak of $26 billion in 1919 to finance the war. The debt declined for the next decade. During the Great Depression of the 1930's, however, the debt increased from $16 billion to $42 billion. During the Second World War the public debt rose sharply to a peak of $279 billion in 1946. From its postwar low in 1949, the outstanding public debt grew gradually for nearly the next two decades. Then, beginning at the time of the Vietnam War in the mid-1960's, the rate of the debt's increase accelerated sharply.

http://www.treas.gov/education/faq/markets/national-debt.html?IMAGE.X=0\&IMAGE.Y=0