Now that the US government has re-opened and the debt ceiling raised leaving untouched the Affordable Care Act, the ostensible trigger for the crisis, the nature of the settlement has prompted speculation as to whether we are going to have a repeat of this in a few months. The deal involves three deadlines: December 13 is when a bipartisan group of legislators from both the House of Representative and the Senate are supposed to come up with a new budget plan; January 15 is when the most recent continuing resolution ends; and February 7 is when the debt ceiling will need to be raised again. [Read more…]