WASHINGTON

Despite constant budget wrangling and finger-pointing by the nation’s policymakers, the government’s short-term fiscal outlook isn’t all that bad. It’s actually getting better — at least for now.

Washington is borrowing about 25 cents for every dollar it spends, down from over 40 cents just a few years ago.

The federal budget deficit will drop to $845 billion this year after topping $1 trillion for four straight years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects. Even if Congress does nothing further to cut spending or raise tax revenues, deficits will continue to shrink — to $430 billion by fiscal 2015, the CBO said.

But, barring a major fix by the president and Congress, the government’s finances will start to worsen again as the three major entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — become more and more expensive and unmanageable under the increasing weight of retiring baby boomers.

Recent budget improvements were helped along by increasing tax revenues as corporate America and many better-off Americans snapped back from the economic downturn and paid more in taxes. Stocks are setting new multi-year levels and corporate profits are soaring.

Yet the recent improvements on corporate and government ledgers haven’t been shared by millions of working class Americans. It’s almost as if there were separate side-by-side economies.

Unemployment is still a high 7.7 percent nearly four years after the worst recession since the Great Depression officially ended, still far above the pre-recession levels of around 5 percent. Companies feel little pressure to raise wages since the pool of job seekers is large. Those with jobs are pressed to work harder, increasing productivity for corporations.

Companies also have benefited from the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies over the past four-plus years.

In keeping interest rates near zero and flooding financial markets with newly printed dollars, the Fed has helped drive up stock prices — partly at the expense of many retired people and other savers who’ve seen interest earnings on their bank accounts dwindle.

Even before the $85 billion in automatic cuts started kicking in on March 1, government spending was shrinking because of the expiration of federal stimulus and other recession-fighting programs of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Steven Rattner, Obama’s former “car czar,” has criticized Obama for exaggerating in depicting the $85 billion sequester cuts as a disaster imperiling the nation. Obama has since toned down his rhetoric and reached out to congressional Republicans. That pleased Rattner.

Legislation passed by Congress over the past two years will reduce deficits by roughly $2.3 trillion over the next decade — two-thirds of it from spending cuts and onethird from more tax revenues.

The increased flow of cash to the government includes higher marginal income taxes on wealthy Americans from the New Year’s “fiscal cliff ” deal and the ending of the tax break for all workers on Social Security payroll taxes.

The $2.3 trillion less that Washington will be borrowing over the next decade takes the government much of the way toward the $4 trillion, 10- year goal set by Obama and the co-chairmen of his deficit commission, former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and former Democratic White House staff chief Erskine Bowles.