While the debt ceiling deal signed earlier this month still drew stern rebukes from many conservatives, there are three reasons Americans should happily accept this deal.

First, and perhaps the most straightforward, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy noted, it commits the federal government to spending cuts — a rare occurrence in Washington.

As we’ve repeatedly said — and will continued to repeatedly say — the U.S. must get serious about its $31 trillion debt. Ballooning deficits are the opposite of any serious effort to curtail that debt. Increasing domestic spending is the opposite of a serious effort to curtail that debt. The United States must do better, and the cuts within this deal are a small step in that direction.

Second, as U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, has noted, this is not the beginning and end of the conversation on Washington’s out-of-control spending. It is rather one brief moment in the middle. America would be better served by fiscal conservatives strategizing and planning for the next budget debate — which Massie anticipates will be a bigger moment in the conversation.

Third, many conservatives have unfortunately weakened their own credibility on this method of restoring responsibility to the nation’s fiscal order. As we’ve noted before and as former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged in a column for Washington-based newspaper The Hill, the debt ceiling has been increased before, without spending cuts.

“The deal that President Trump negotiated raised the debt ceiling and had precisely zero spending reductions,” Mulvaney observes. “The fiscally conservative wing of the GOP lost some of its focus while Donald Trump was in the White House.”

That perception of hypocrisy enraged — and empowered — critics of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s resistance to a “clean” debt ceiling increase. Even as modest of a step as many conservatives may feel this to be, It is not only a step in the right fiscal direction. It’s a step away from a period in which conservatives, in Mulvaney’s words “lost some of their focus.”

We believe they should accept this deal, and the opportunity to steadily prove their regained consistency and focus.