from the Washington Post:

The Washington Post
As red ink recedes, pressure fades for budget deal
After four years of trillion-dollar deficits, the red ink is receding rapidly in Washington, easing pressure on policymakers but shattering hopes for a summertime budget deal.Federal tax revenue is up and spending is down thanks to an improving economy, tax increases that took effect in January and the automatic budget cuts known as the sequester.

The net effect will be that the system will stabilize with all of the idiocy of the across-the-board, meat-ax approach that the sequester creates (except, of course,  for the air traffic controllers and some meat inspectors).

Increasingly, governance in the USA looks like the design of the worst possible compromise.