They're mostly "discretionary caps" on future spending, a promise to cut spending down the road. Honest. If you think those cuts will ever take place, I've got a bridge to sell you.

So it's the old gag: a tax increase right now, in exchange for nebulous spending cuts later. The Democrats have pulled this more than once.

Remember the "Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction" that was supposed to identify $1.2 trillion in budget cuts by November 2011? It disbanded in January 2012 after producing exactly nothing. Put it up on the shelf with Simpson-Bowles.

No real spending cuts have taken place, other than a few billion token cuts. The budget projections from Obama's last proposal will have us at a budget of $5.5 trillion in ten years.

I'm not addressing the "debt limit fight" because I'm not chasing the red herring. All the propaganda in the next few months is going to be about the debt limit, because the Democrats damn well don't want to talk about the actual debt.