Alex Adrianson of the Heritage Foundation’s “Insider Online” looks beyond the headlines tied to recent news about the federal deficit.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the 2014 federal deficit rings in at $486 billion. That’s 2.8 percent of gross domestic product—the federal budget deficit’s smallest share of the economy since 2007. (It was nearly 10 percent in 2009.) Should President Obama and federal lawmakers pat themselves on the back? Megan McArdle summarizes the rest of the story:

Congressional Budget Office projections currently show the deficit beginning to grow again in 2016, just in time for the presidential election. By 2019, it’ll be above its historical average, where it will stay until the end of the forecast window – and that historical average is itself a bit high, as it includes the post-war record deficit of the Obama administration, which ran close to 10 percent for several years.

If the growth in health-care costs continues to moderate, that may help a bit, but mostly, the rising cost of health care is not the problem. The problem is the rising number of aging citizens who will require Social Security benefits, Medicare and, eventually, Medicaid to pay for their nursing homes. For the next decade or so, it is demographics, not compound cost growth, that will account for most of our budget problems. And you can’t fix the demographics by directing providers to charge 2.9 percent less for their senior citizens. […]

As the Fed tightens up on monetary policy, our borrowing costs are going to rise, not just for the new debt we take on, but also for the debt we already have. As old debt matures, we’ve been borrowing at record-low interest rates, which has helped hold down the deficit. But as the Fed tightens, that party will end, and the numbers will start moving in the other direction.