How The Debt Ceiling Will Work

Great flow chart in the link below from the New York Times that reviews and summarizes the week's first big news which seems like a lifetime ago.

The most important point: $21 billion cut in 2012 from our $3.7 trillion in annual spending.

This can be thought of visually as a tiny drop in the ocean.

Everything else is spread out into the "future" in cuts and tax increase that will never come.

NYT FLOW CHART: HOW THE DEBT CEILING WILL WORK

For ean even better visual the graph below shows spending over the next ten years (red lines) against the proposed cuts (blue lines).