What’s the first thing that strikes you there? The size of the federal budget is slated to increase over the ten year period covered by the August debt limit deal known as the Budget Control Act.

So, when we talk about “across the board budget cuts” that would occur in the future because the Super Committee couldn't reach a deal, we are talking about lowering these same spending caps.

Here is how the Congressional Budget Office sees this process:

“CBO estimates that, if no legislation originating from the deficit reduction committee was enacted, the automatic enforcement process specified in the Budget Control Act would produce the following results between 2013 and 2021:

What does that translate to in terms of dollar amounts?

The CBO’s estimated savings from the automatic budget reductions would be:

So for Fiscal Year 2013, the Congress would have to come up with $33 billion in savings for the military, $21 billion in non-defense spending and $16 billion in entitlement savings. Throw in a couple of slight adjustments, and there is your $68 billion in savings.

The next year, the Congress would have to find $46 billion in defense savings, $35 billion in non-defense and $17 billion in entitlement savings – make some smaller adjustments and you are at $94 billion.

Remember – Congress had an extraordinarily difficult time just basically keeping the budget the around the same level this past year, let alone making $68 billion or $94 billion in “cuts.”

And one last thing to remember from a CBO report: “Since 2001, discretionary spending has increased at an average annual rate of 8.2 percent.”

And now, the Congress is supposed to turn that around every year for the next ten years.

One thing I should remind everyone of, is that the Congress could conceivably come in at some point and make a change in this budget plan.

Just something to think about as the Super Committee gets ready to admit it wasn’t able to come to a Super Deal of any kind.