Shhh! Don’t tell anyone, but over the past couple of years, the U.S.’s debt burden, the big issue that swept Tea Party-led Republicans into control of the House of Representatives in 2010, has quietly improved. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget deficit was $506 billion for fiscal 2014, which ended in October. That’s about a third the size of the deficit in 2009, in the depths of the Great Recession. The deficit also has fallen from more than 10% of GDP in fiscal 2009 to only 2.9% of GDP in fiscal 2014. (See the chart below, courtesy of A. Gary Shilling & Co.) That would put the U.S. ... (full story)