That deal was yet another instance of an economic crisis averted--just barely, and that's become the norm on any type of economic or fiscal policy. "What is dysfunctional is that they haven't been making decisions until the very last-minute," says Keith Hennessey, a former senior economic adviser to President George W. Bush and a former policy aide for Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. "They've been doing ad hoc decisions for the past two years."

In part, these ad hoc decisions have been warranted, given the unprecedented threat and hangover from the Great Recession. It demanded responsive, nimble moves by government officials and politicians. The stimulus package and its influx of cash, for instance, was cooked up on a crazy deadline, but it's a well-documented fact that it boosted the country's economic output when it needed it and created more than 4 million jobs at the peak of 2010.

The question for 2013 is: Can politicians and policymakers wean themselves off the high of last-minute policy to create longer-term, less reactive plans to create jobs, or boost the housing market, or build better roads and bridges, or overhaul the tax code, or curb health care spending over the next two decades?

Well, actually, yeah. They certainly have the power. It's just not clear if there's the political will. "These guys know how to govern," says Sean West, a director at Eurasia Group, a consulting firm focused on political risk. "The lesson now is that economic fights can be done in parallel with other legislation."

That will be one of the challenges for President Obama's upcoming State of the Union address on Feb. 12--laying out the way his liberal vision fits with the starker and more deadline-oriented fiscal battles we face in the coming months like the sequester, the appropriations process, and the debt ceiling.

There's some hope that the economic brinkmanship has subsided, because Congress voted to suspend the debt ceiling until May and has promised to produce budget blueprints through the more traditional route--called "regular order." But, there's no guarantee that this normal process will produce anything workable, such as a budget agreement. And, it seems pretty clear that House Republicans will balk if Obama proposes big new stimulus spending for things like infrastructure projects and job-training programs.

Instead, other legislation such as immigration reform may serve as one of the best vehicles in 2013 for putting the economy on a sounder path. It's a form of economic policy, only in different wrapping paper.

A smart overhaul of immigration laws could boost the wages and productivity of people already working in the U.S., increase the country's economic output, grow the tax base, and help to fund federal government programs such as Medicare in future years.