“Deficits don’t matter.” So said then-Vice President Dick Cheney during a high-level budget meeting in late 2002, after Republicans performed surprisingly well during that fall’s midterm elections. Voters, shocked by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, helped the Republican Party gain seats in both houses of Congress and win back the Senate.

According to conventional wisdom, the Republicans had won the election and earned the right to enact their spending program. Even though the federal government had run four years of budget surpluses, voters preferred new national security spending rather than fiscal responsibility.