Reuters

On August 1, 2011, following a long, bruising, and economically harmful stand-off, a splintered House of Representatives voted to raise the debt ceiling, with 95 Democrats joining the majority and 66 Republicans voting in opposition. Days later, the ratings agency S&P voted to downgrade America's long-term debt for the first time in history.

Two years, two months, and two weeks later, history is repeating itself, with terrific precision. The deficit is much lower, the economy is considerably bigger, we are theoretically wiser from experience, and yet ... here we are.

The country is suffering another long, bruising, and economically harmful showdown over the debt limit. The House of Representatives—still divided not only between two parties but also between two factions within the GOP—seems likely to require another splintered vote to avoid economic catastrophe. Yesterday afternoon, Fitch, another major credit-rating firm, announced it was putting the U.S. on alert for a possible downgrade of the nation's AAA credit rating.

Credit-rating agencies typically don't do this sort of thing. They don't downgrade countries with low interest rates and falling debt-to-GDP ratios. American deficits aren't just falling, they're plummeting at the fastest rate since World War II demobilization, in large part due to sequestration cuts that came out of the last debt-ceiling fight (cuts that are, by most economists' measure, sapping a weak economy of jobs and growth).