Did 2013 mark the end of fiscal austerity in Washington?

By most accounts, 2013 was a disheartening one for President Obama and American liberals in general. Gun control went nowhere nationally, and was even rolled back in many parts of the country. Immigration reform is stuck in House Republican purgatory. The botched rollout of Healthcare.gov drove Obama's biggest domestic achievement to new polling lows, adding insult to liberals' injury about not having a single-payer Medicare-for-all option.

But there is one bright spot, says Paul Krugman at The New York Times: America's "fiscal fever" has finally broken. Here's how Krugman defines the malady:

Krugman suggests that while the Washington "fiscal scolds" are still "getting worshipful treatment from some news organizations," they are "no longer able to define the bounds of respectable opinion." He makes four points to back up his assertion: Everyone finally knows that political "centrism" died with Republican moderates; rising tax receipts and falling spending have slashed the federal deficit; journalists stopped listening to debt alarmists; and "finally, over the course of 2013 the intellectual case for debt panic collapsed."

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E.J. Dionne at The Washington Post raises another piece of evidence: When the Tea Party pushed the GOP into shutting down the government, "Obama did not blink and Democrats did not break ranks." The public was furious at Republicans, forcing the GOP to give in.

In 2013, Dionne concludes, "the Tea Party began to decline in both real and perceived power, and Republicans began a slow retreat from the politics of absolutism."

We've all read the Tea Party's political obituary before, though. "The Tea Party's hold on the GOP persists beyond each burial ceremony," says Theda Skocpol at The Atlantic. "Once the October 2013 shutdown ended in supposed total victory for President Obama and his party, many Democrats adopted a cocky swagger," she adds, but "our debates about federal budgets still revolve around degrees of imposed austerity."

After all, a flood of stimulus money isn't coming anytime soon.

In fact, some say little changed at all during the era of austerity. "Politicians have, indeed, had historic success cutting numbers — the abstract, friend-less figures at the bottom of the federal balance sheet," says David A. Fahrenthold at The Washington Post. But they mostly ignored "decisions about how the country really ought to spend its money."

Fahrenthold ends his analysis with this anecdote:

Somewhere, Paul Krugman is smiling.