One two three: what are we fighting for?

Not to deny that the House Republicans' cuts in discretionary spending will have negligible impact on the U.S.'s structural deficit, or that the near-$40 billion in cuts that it seems Democrats will inexplicably agree to won't cause unnecessary suffering and slow economic growth (Mark Zandi estimated that $61 billion in cuts would reduce employment by 700,000 through the end of 2012).  All that said, a brief zoom-out:

The Federal government spent $3.46 trillion in 2010.  Democratic proposals that became part of the late 2010 tax cut deal  (mainly the 13-month unemployment benefit extension, the payroll tax cut, and the stepped-up writeoff for business investment) were worth $336 billion, according to Zandi.  Last-minute Democratic concessions on the 2011 bill will probably take the spending cuts past the $34 billion that would make this comparison satisfyingly neat to someone with my sixth-grade math skills, but you get the idea.