The deficit is a political issue.
When the republicans forced slick willie to cut spending so the deficit could be reduced this was deemed a good thing.
I don't believe it was so much spending cuts, but rather cap gains and dividend tax cuts, as well as welfare reform.
There era of big govt was never even dented.
We've got one party who will do anything required to coddle and grow their base of entitleds and the publicly employed,
and another party that pretty much pays lip service to limited Govt, even though moving closer to the ideal, with lower taxes, their goal too seems to be revenue centric, instead of limiting centric.
I took this to be derived from the popular idea that the Reagan tax cuts reduced the deficit and increased the tax receipts of the Treasury- "paid for themselves" in common parlance. The problem with this claim is that Reagan's own economists disowned that idea in their books, and Lawrence Lindsey's study backed up their actual claim- which is that economic growth, stimulated by the tax cuts, would recoup a large portion of the revenue loss predicted by static analysis. But there would be an increase in the deficit due to the tax cuts.
The Reagan economists didn't take deficits lightly. They wanted dollar for dollar cuts in spending to match their predicted increase in the deficit. Tip O'Neill of course reneged on his side of the bargain, and that, combined with an unexpectedly fast reduction in inflation, caused the deficit to expand.