Ah, Washington. The good news is that our national leaders saved our butts (for the moment) from bottoming out off the “fiscal cliff.” The bad news is: Watch your head—it’ll soon come crunching up against another unnecessary “debt ceiling” crisis. The most important Good vs. Bad News about the New Year’s Day cliff dive is that the Ugly—the prospect that Congress’ failure to raise the debt ceiling could actually cause the United States to default on its international debts with genuine economic consequences—is now put off, but only until March.

While it’s difficult to calculate the overall impact of the Bush tax cuts, the Great Recession might actually have made them less detrimental to America’s finances. Because the economic slowdown drastically reduced government revenues, gross domestic product was well below projections, and the loss of revenue was actually somewhat lower than the Congressional Budget Office initially projected. Nevertheless, the Bush tax cuts left America in a much weaker position to cope with the 2008 crash.