except they weren't overly concerned with that when baby bush was running two wars of choice on china's dime
By Dylan Matthews, Published: October 4 at 12:28 pmE-mail the writer
1. So this is all about the deficit, right?It's true that House Republicans are holding up a spending bill, but they're not holding it up over demands for spending cuts or tax increases or some other package of deficit reduction. In fact, they're happy with the level of spending in the bill. It's a number they proposed, after all.Center for American Progresshttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...pisrc=nl_wnkpm
For that reason, it was widely assumed that passing a continuing resolution to fund the government at current levels would be a relatively uncontroversial proposition. But then Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) came in. They declared that they wouldn't support a continuing resolution that doesn't "defund" Obamacare. That failed, so then they said they wouldn't vote on a CR that didn't delay Obamacare. Then it was a CR that didn't delay the individual mandate.Senate Democrats (not to mention the Obama administration) weren't willing to dismantle Obamacare as a cost of keeping the government open. Republicans weren't willing to keep the government open unless Democrats let them dismantle Obamacare. So the government closed. (Here's absolutely everything you need to know about government shutdowns.)2. Wait, I totally thought this was about the deficit. Why aren't Republicans worried about the deficit?There's not a whole lot left to worry about anymore. The deficit is set to fall rapidly through 2018:Data: U.S. Budget and CBO projections; Graph: made with Infogram by Ezra Klein
Which means that the debt is going to be largely stable in the medium-term: