The FY 2013 budget that the Administration will release today is, in the long run, a meaningless document in substantive terms, so I don’t want to spend that much time on it. But I was a little surprised with the pushback I received about my assessment that it reflects a shift in tone rather than policy. It’s a simple fact that the Administration has wanted a deficit deal for some time, and that this budget will build in a deficit deal. They’re going about it in a smarter way with a higher bid in the negotiations.

Six Republican Senators unveiled their legislation yesterday to roll back the defense trigger from the debt limit deal, replacing the $600 billion in savings with other cuts. However, this is not a $600 billion deal; in fact, the Senators, led by John McCain, only delayed the first year of defense cuts at a cost of $109 billion. They achieved this through pay freezes and cuts to federal employees. Considering that members of the military are also federal employees, you’re basically sparing one set of federal employees for another.

Doctors Without Borders said that since August, its medical teams have treated 115 people in Misrata who bore torture-related wounds, including cigarette burns, heavy bruising, bone fractures, tissue burns from electric shocks and kidney failure from beatings. Two detainees died after being interrogated, the group’s general director said.

Leon Panetta has sketched out his vision for an “austerity” military, which only spends slightly less than every country on Earth does on their militaries combined, rather than more. This reflects the cuts from the spending cap version of the debt limit deal, not the trigger cuts which would reduce another $500-$600 billion from Pentagon budgets over 10 years. We’ll be able to fight only one unnecessary ground war and another “not-hostilities” action, plus drones wherever.

Why is the White House asking to raise the debt limit now? In the text of the Budget Control Act of 2011, aka the debt limit deal, you see that Title III sets up the “Debt Limit Disapproval Process.” This sets the rules for when the President needs to ask for an increase in the debt limit, and the Rube Goldberg-like process for how Congress can “disapprove” of it without really stopping it.

The Washington Post used a front page, above the fold article, to complain that Congress and President Obama had not done as much as it would have liked to reduce the deficit. What the Post failed to reports is that many people around Washington and across the country applauded this failure as a great victory.

This week, the White House will ask Congress for the second tranche of increases to the debt limit, as negotiated in the August deal. The conditions for the second debt limit increase have been satisfied by the pulling of the trigger, caused by the collapse of the Super Committee. Republicans can only stop this second increase through a “resolution of disapproval,” a vote that the President can then veto. But that deal also constrains how much deficit spending occurs this fiscal year, and thus the “pay-fors” for any stimulus measure.

One of the standard opinions from many economists, especially those on the right, was that the US spending/debt load was unsustainable and would surely spark massive inflation. After the downgrade of US debt by Standard and Poor’s after the debt limit deal, debt was seen as toxic. America just had to deal with its debt problem or the bond market would deal with it for them. This dog simply has not barked.

Despite threats to carry on with a one-week recess, Congress stayed in session, with still no agreement on funding the government past this Friday. That means the threat of a government shutdown is still there.

I think Republicans are showing themselves sensitive to criticism over hostage-taking, at least in the short term. It did damage to their party in the debt limit debate, and they’re wary of jumping into another fight of a similar ilk. The next hurdles to clear will be 2012 appropriations and surface transportation funding, both of which expire September 30.