As the State of the Union Address and the first partisan blows of the 2014 election cycle approach, there’s a familiar character missing from the political state: the Deficit Boogeyman. With federal budget deficits plunging and the debt-to-GDP ratio stabilizing, public concern over deficits-and-debts is gradually abating despite the massive investments made by deficit hawks in creating an emergency atmosphere conducive to “grand bargains” involving tax increases and curbs in spending on Social Security and Medicare. With Republicans refusing to consider any real revenue measures, and the two parties managing to cobble together essential spending and (we can hope) debt limit legislation, interest in big budget deals, made bipartisan by the president for the last two years, has now all but vanished.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=212451