The absence of alarmist talk about federal borrowing represents a sharp shift. Republicans repeatedly criticized the growth of federal spending under President Obama as unaffordable and dangerous. Some Democrats criticized President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the same basic reasons.

But dire warnings about the consequences of federal borrowing have proved premature at best, and the political landscape has shifted. Republicans have embraced Mr. Trump’s agenda of tax cuts and spending increases, arguing that it will lift economic growth. Democrats are seeking a very different set of changes in fiscal policy, but they too argue the federal debt is not an urgent problem.

“Politicians and policymakers should focus on urgent social problems, not deficits,” two prominent liberal economists, Jason Furman and Lawrence H. Summers, wrote in a widely discussed piece published in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. Both men were economic advisers to Mr. Obama.