Congressional analysts painted a rosier picture of America’s fiscal outlook for the next decade on the back of this month’s deal to increase the debt ceiling, but lowered their economic projections and continued to warn that more action was needed to steady US public finances over the long term.

Over the next 10 years the US will rack up $3,487bn in deficits, the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday, instead of the $6,737bn figure estimated earlier this year.

The improvement is the result of the agreement struck three weeks ago by Congress and the White House, to generate at least $2,100bn in savings for the US government by 2021. Lowered expectations of interest rates also helped to shrink the fiscal gap expected in the coming years.