There are times when the absence of really, really bad news passes for good news. This is such a time here in America, at least for those who worry that our fiscal deficits of over about $1,000,000,000,000 per year will soon have historians referring to the glory that was Washington.

Since Obama was elected, the budget game has been played as follows. The president’s budgets fail to win a single vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and the House Republicans’ budget is not even brought to a vote there—derision on arrival. So the government has been operating without a budget, subject to repeated cliff-hanging deals. No consideration of how to handle the fact that the creaking baby boomers’ demands for new body parts to keep them frisky forever will soon exceed the funds available to cover that search for the fountain of youth, not to mention an ever-expanding list of other health-care costs, including a never-ending series of newly discovered “rights.”