"Once this last uncertainty is resolved, the path to faster growth may be open," Bullard said in a speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., was more downbeat.
"The consequences of the debt ceiling debacle are going to be long-lasting," said El-Erian, whose Newport Beach, California-based firm manages the world's biggest bond fund. "It inflicted a hit to both national and international confidence."
History suggests that fiscal consolidation can have pluses and minuses for an economy, said Michael Mussa, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
Deficit to Surplus
The U.S. economy grew at an average 4 percent per year from 1994 to 2000 as the federal government's budget moved from deficit to surplus under former President Bill Clinton.
Japan was not so fortunate, Mussa said. Its economy fell back into recession in 1998 after it raised consumption taxes and took other steps to tighten fiscal policy.
In choosing austerity, the U.S. is embarking on a course that some European nations already have pursued with mixed results. A new coalition government in the United Kingdom last year enacted a program of reduced spending and tax increases aimed at closing the budget deficit.
Creditors have welcomed the austerity measures. The yield on the U.K.'s 10-year bond has fallen to 2.8 percent from 3.85 percent on May 12, 2010, when the coalition government was formed, today.
George Magnus, senior economic adviser to UBS Investment Bank in London, said the fiscal retrenchment has established the government's credibility.