Why Spending Cuts Likely Won’t Shake the Economy

The last time the United States came perilously close to defaulting on its debt, a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House cut a deal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit and tightly restrain some federal spending growth for years to come. The deal averted default, but it hindered what was already a slow recovery from the Great Recession.

The debt deal that President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy have agreed to in…