US reaches debt ceiling tomorrow

The whole "national debt" thing has always fascinated me. Why do we even bother to track it, we will never, NEVER, EVER pay it off! At some point other countries will stop selling things to us on credit because it will hit them too that we will never, ever pay down the debt.

Or more likely, they will instead buy up all of our debt that they can, and soon all of America will be owned by other countries...oh wait that is already happening

Okay so I haven't heard anything about us reaching the debt ceiling (credit limit). Was this tread premature? Does anyone know for sure when the debt ceiling will likely be reached?