How then should voters parse these latest numbers? The federal deficit reflects the confluence of two separate factors: the current tax-and-spending policies and the strength of the business cycle. A weak economy both reduces tax revenues and raises government spending. For this reason, economists who are trying to evaluate what the deficit would be if economic conditions were normal refer to the “cyclically adjusted budget balance,” which strips out the effects of the economy’s ups and downs.

It’s a nice idea in theory, but in practice, a complete accounting of the factors that have narrowed the deficit is not possible. Even so, we can see something by juxtaposing two simple facts. It is surely the case that the economy is operating further below its capacity than it has, on average, over the past 40 years. And the budget deficit is also below its average over the same period. It follows then that any cyclically adjusted measure of the budget shows that fiscal policy is substantially tighter than its long-run average.

The harder question is not whether fiscal policy is relatively tight — it is — but rather whether tight fiscal policy is appropriate.

For those who are concerned about government debt, smaller deficits are surely a good thing. And indeed, because deficits are expected to remain relatively small, total public debt as a share of the economy’s total output is projected to be roughly stable over the next decade. It is only over subsequent decades that the debt is projected to rise, although any economic forecast made decades in advance comes with a sufficiently wide margin of error that there’s also a good chance that it also may fall.