The House and Senate are ready to vote on legislation cutting almost $40 billion from the budget for the current year, but President Barack Obama and his GOP rivals are both eager to move on to multi-year fiscal plans that cut trillions instead of billions.
It's touted as the biggest one-time rollback of domestic spending ever, but most folks will be hard-pressed to notice. After all, it's just 1 percent of what the government will lay out this year.
Details of last week's hard-won agreement to avoid a government shutdown and cut federal spending by $38 billion were released Tuesday morning. They reveal the budget cuts, while historic, were significantly eased by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand.