From The New York Times:
WASHINGTON — Closing the books on a fiscal year in which the federal budget deficit fell more sharply than in any year since the end of World War II, the Treasury Department reported on Thursday that the deficit for 2013 dropped to $680 billion, from about $1.1 trillion the previous year.
In nominal terms, that is the smallest deficit since 2008, and signals the end of a five-year stretch beginning with the onset of the recession when the country’s fiscal gap came in at more than $1 trillion each year. As a share of the nation’s economy, the budget deficit fell to about 4.1 percent, from a high of more than 10 percent during the depths of the Great Recession.
...
“Thanks to the tenacity of the American people and the determination of the private sector we are moving in the right direction,” Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in the report. “The United States has recovered faster than any other advanced economy, and our deficit today is less than half of what it was when President Obama first took office.”
http://www.nytimes.com/...
This should spell the end to yet another GOP talking point - that the deficit is just too darned high to spend money on anything, including road repair and/or veterans' benefits - but it probably won't. Despite authoritative debunkings, Goposaurs continue to pursue the fake IRS scandal as well as the fake Benghazi scandal. So why would they give up their all-time favorite fake "runaway spending" meme? They wouldn't. But at least now when they trot that out, we can rightly go, "pfffffffft".