More than two years ago, when President Bush announced his aim to cut the federal budget deficit in half by 2009, many critics guffawed. They called the goal an impossibility, a naïve and futile effort that would be undermined by the fat-cat Republican tax cuts. A Boston Globe headline declared, “Bush’s plan to halve federal deficit seen as unlikely; Higher spending, lower taxes don’t mix, analysts say.” An Associated Press story went out on the wire with the headline, “Bush goal of halving federal deficits draws skepticism, derision.”

In that AP article, Sen. Kent Conrad, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, was quoted deriding Bush’s plan: “It’s like so much with this administration in respect to fiscal matters, it’s all spin, all the time.” Former Congressional Budget Office director Robert Reischauer called the proposal “fanciful.” To Democrats, the AP reported, Bush’s goal was simply “laughable.”

But the critics are no longer laughing. Driven by a surging national economy, tax revenues are increasing and the deficit is rapidly shrinking. The president’s deficit-reduction plan looks like it will not only succeed, but will do so years ahead of schedule.